§ Mrs. Dunwoodyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services why the most recent abortion figures published covered a 13-week and a 15-week period of 1981 instead of keeping in line with past practice of using 13-week periods; and if he will now give figures for the first three 13-week periods for 1981.
§ Mr. Geoffrey FinsbergAs reported on 4 March 1981 to the Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, a new abortion form has been introduced and this is being linked to a computer processing system at OPCS that will produce quarterly statistics based on abortions performed during each three-month period, rather than on notifications received. The 15-week and 13-week figures recently published were interim figures of notifications received, prior to the commencement of regular publication of the numbers of abortions actually performed. Figures of abortions performed in the first quarter of 1981 should be published within six weeks from now, and for the second quarter about the end of April 1982.
In the long run the figures will be better, because there are appreciable fluctuations in the number of late notifications received and these distorted the earlier series. The new quarterly figures of abortions performed will be directly comparable with a table produced in previous issues of the annual OPCS reference volume "Abortion Statistics".