A horrifying new milestone has been reached in Abortuary Britain. Abortion numbers reached a record high in 2023, with an estimated 299,614 abortions taking place across the United Kingdom.

Abortion statistics released by the Department of Health and Social Care this morning show the highest number of abortions ever recorded in England and Wales, with 278,740 taking place in 2023, an increase of 26,618 (10.56%) from 2022.

When added to the record 18,242 abortions that took place in Scotland in 2023 and the record 2,632 estimated number of abortions that took place in Northern Ireland in 2023*, this takes the estimated total number of abortions across the United Kingdom for 2023 to a record 299,614. 

In England and Wales, there were a total of 278,740 abortions in 2023, an increase of 26,618 abortions from 2022, when there were 252,122 abortions. This represents a 10.56% increase in abortions from the previous year. 277,970 of these abortions were for residents of England and Wales, an increase of 26,593.

ProLife activists have won another welcome victory in the USA. fter a successful pro-life rescue that temporarily closed a Pennsylvania abortion centre, involved arrests and initial jail time of several days, six Red Rose Rescue activists had all criminal charges against them dismissed on Monday at the Delaware County Courthouse in Media.

The rescuers included Dr. Monica M. Miller, Eric Holmberg, Will Goodman, ChristyAnne Collins, Patty Woodworth, and Joan Andrews Bell.

“We came out on top for sure,” Miller told LifeSiteNews regarding their successful July 31 rescue at the Delaware County Women’s Center and their ability to simply walk out of the courtroom yesterday and celebrate a successful plea hearing.

An August 6 press release from Red Rose Rescue (RRR) explained how the six activists were peacefully offering roses to mothers going into the chemical abortion facility along with resources for alternatives to abortion.

They also provided information to abortion center staff regarding how they could depart the abortion industry and access support from former abortion staff members who had become pro-life.

The rescuers were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and “defiant” trespass after they refused to leave the abortion center at the request of police officers, to whom they explained “we cannot leave as long as the unborn are scheduled to be killed.”

Some of the rescuers were treated harshly by the police, and, oddly, the respective rescuers were held in the “filthy overcrowded” county jail for periods of one to six days.

But as a result of their rescue efforts, the abortion facility closed and thus they celebrated that all the abortion appointments for that day were cancelled.

This particular abortion center only provides chemical abortions through the use of the lethal pill mifepristone, and Miller explained that “there were about eight women that were already in there being readied for their abortion pill regimen. The clinic shut down because of our rescue. Every woman walked out of there without the kill pills.”

“That meant that at least the unborn children had a reprieve of their execution. And this really also gave women an opportunity to change their minds,” said Miller, who serves as director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society. “So, we’ve been keeping those moms in prayer.”

The United Kingdom is on the precipice of decriminalising abortion, a move that will lead to widespread sex-selective abortion practices among certain ethnic groups that prize male children over females. 

“Britain’s wicked plan allowing abortions up to the point of birth (no other European nation allows the like) will mean many more sex-selective abortions here,” journalist and opinionator Colin Brazier wrote on X. He noted that the murdering of yet to be born girls is “(p)redominantly ordered by fathers from cultures that prize men above women.”

Brazier was referring to a report by John Power in The Spectator UK that claimed the about-to-be-voted-on measure — a clause buried in the Crime and Policing Bill alongside 1,482 other amendments — will enable sex-selective abortions. 

“In June 2025, pro-abortion MPs, led by Tonia Antoniazzi MP, hijacked the Crime and Policing Bill to rush through the abortion up to birth clause (191) after just 46 minutes of backbench debate – there was no prior consultation with the public, no Committee Stage scrutiny and no evidence sessions,” explained Right to Life UK (RTL), a leading voice opposing passage of the legislation.  

“The Antoniazzi clause would make it more likely that healthy babies are aborted at home for any reason, up to birth,” RTL said (emphasis added).

“Further liberalising access to abortion will mean more girls being terminated in the womb because of their sex,” Power declared.

“The practice of female infanticide is widespread throughout much of the world, most famously in China — where it dates back more than two millennia — but it also occurs in countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Albania, Vietnam and Georgia,” Power wrote. “There are roughly 140 million fewer women because of sex-selective abortion and infanticide.” 

The first year of the second Trump administration has been a mixed bag for the pro-life movement.

A report from the abortion activist outfit the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) highlights the “pros” side of the Trump administration’s first year. CRR claims that “the Trump administration has further decimated abortion access during his first year back in office,” including:

• The pardoning of pro-life activists convicted of violating the FACE Act.
• Implementing “a new policy that would prevent veterans on VA health insurance from having abortions even in cases of rape, incest, or severe health risks.”
• “Forcing clinics to close or reduce services nationwide by taking away their Medicaid funding. About 50 Planned Parenthood health centers have since closed.”
• Launching “an FDA investigation into the abortion pill, which could make it much harder to access.”
• Calling “birth control an “abortifacient” in order to “destroy millions of dollars in contraception headed for African countries,” which CRR claims could lead to over “1.5 million unintended pregnancies.”

The “cons” side of the chart has been significant. Trump has consistently pushed for IVF, pitching a range of policies and urging the Republican Party to “own” the issue. He has advocated compromise on the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of tax dollars for abortion and has saved millions of lives. Worst of all, his administration has approved a generic new abortion pill that will “normalize” pill abortions even further and make it increasingly accessible even as the percentage of such abortions exceeds 60% of the U.S. total.

All of this must be called out by pro-lifers, and the political arm of the movement must fight these policies. They have been doing so, and there is evidence that pro-life lobbying made Trump’s IVF policies significantly less damaging than they might have been.

We should also not be surprised. Donald Trump is a pragmatic, pro-choice politician who has stacked his administration with many pro-life figures and sees the pro-life movement as a political ally without sharing many of our principles. Trump made this crystal clear during the 2024 election, when he removed the pro-life plank from the GOP platform, advocated against six-week abortion bans, and emphasised his support for the abortion pill.

Pope Leo XIV denounced abortion and surrogacy while defending the family in a Friday address to the diplomatic corps.

He first highlighted what he considers to be two key challenges to the family today, namely, “a worrying tendency in the international system to neglect and underestimate its fundamental social role, leading to its progressive institutional marginalisation,” and “the growing and painful reality of fragile, broken and suffering families,” afflicted by internal problems such as domestic violence.

The vocation “to love and to life manifests itself in an important way in the exclusive and indissoluble union between a woman and a man,” Pope Leo said of marriage, and “implies a fundamental ethical imperative for enabling families to welcome and fully care for unborn life.” He did not specify what he meant by “enabling” families to welcome life. Nevertheless, married couples have a moral obligation to always remain open to life by refraining from contraception.

Such life is a “priceless gift” and is “increasingly a priority, especially in those countries that are experiencing a dramatic decline in birth rates,” he went on, without directly referencing contraception as a major contributing factor to declining birth rates.

He went on to condemn surrogacy and abortion, the latter of which he called a practice that “cuts short a growing life and refuses to welcome the gift of life.”

“In light of this profound vision of life as a gift to be cherished, and of the family as its responsible guardian, we categorically reject any practice that denies or exploits the origin of life and its development,” Leo said. 

Gambling is a one of the biggest social curses of all so, even though the UK government is notoriously soft on the family-wrecking industry, some good action does happen now and again. Paddy Power Betfair has been sanctioned by the industry regulator for systematically failing to protect customers from gambling harm.

The operator has been fined a £2 million penalty by the Gambling Commission after systems to identify and address harm were found to be ineffective.

In 2023, Paddy Power Betfair was fined £490,000 for sending ‘push notifications’ to self-excluding customers.

An investigation by the regulator found that “systems the licensees had in place were not sensitive enough to identify indicators of harm”.

One customer, it reported, “staked £86,000 over a 16-day period during which time they lost £6,000. Despite the high velocity of spend, no manual review of the account took place”.

Another “lost £12,300 in five weeks before being identified for an interaction”, while a third deposited £25,000 in 25 days before Paddy Power Betfair intervened.

Paddy Power Betfair owner Flutter Entertainment claimed: “Customer safety is our No 1 priority and there is no suggestion that any of the customers reviewed by the Gambling Commission experienced any harm.”

But Commission Director of Enforcement John Pierce said: “This £2 million settlement reflects the seriousness of the failings identified and the importance of meeting social responsibility and customer interaction standards.”

The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland (BCOS) published a message on Tuesday reflecting on and expressing their concerns over the country’s radical abortion buffer zone laws that have resulted in the arrest of pro-life activists silently praying near abortuaries.

In the January 6 statement, the bishops lamented that Scotland’s draconian “buffer zone” laws have punished pro-lifers for peacefully praying or holding signs outside abortion centers, and could punish citizens praying within their own homes. In 2024, the leftist-dominated Scottish legislature passed a law barring the harassment, intimidation, and “influencing” of anyone seeking to kill their babies within 200-meter-wide “exclusion zones” or “buffer zones” surrounding all the country’s abortuaries.

“It is therefore unsettling that this season saw the first person in Scotland charged under the new so-called ‘buffer zone’ law in Scotland; a law the Church believes curtails Scotland’s commitment to freedom of expression and conscience, and restricts critical voices from democratic debate in the public square,” the bishops wrote.

Here, the BCOS appears to be referring to the case of Rose Docherty, a 75-year-old pro-life grandmother who was arrested for silently holding a sign that read “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want,” within the “buffer zone” of Queen Elizabeth University Hospital’s abortuary last fall. Docherty was held in custody for several hours, during which she was refused a chair to sit on in her cell despite making it known that she had a double hip replacement.

“I can’t believe I am here today. I simply stood, in love and compassion, offering consensual conversation to anyone who wanted to engage,” Docherty said after a court hearing just days before Christmas.

“Nobody should be criminalised just for offering a chat,” she declared. “Conversation is not a crime on the streets of Glasgow.”

The bishops noted that while the Church does not condone the harassment or intimidation of those planning to abort their unborn child, this “undemocratic” law was really meant to deny Scottish pro-lifers their basic freedoms.

“When parliaments introduce criminal offences where existing law is already sufficient, questions should be raised and alarm bells ring,” they said. “We oppose this law because it is disproportionate and undemocratic. It represents state overreach and curtails basic freedoms. The Church would similarly oppose legislation mandating buffer zones outside nuclear weapons facilities or refugee detention centres. This should concern every Scottish citizen, regardless of their views on abortion.”

“As the Parliamentary Officer for the Catholic Church in Scotland pointed out, women experiencing crisis pregnancies may be ‘denied the opportunity to freely speak to people and organisations who may be able to help them,'” they added. “A law supposedly designed to protect choice risks doing the opposite — eliminating one side of a conversation and one set of choices altogether.”

The bishops further stressed their concern that the law extends to private homes within the “buffer zones.”

“The Act extends to private homes within designated zones. A pro-life poster displayed in a window, a conversation overheard, a prayer said by a window; all could, in principle, fall within the scope of criminal sanction,” they said.

“That sends a chill down the spine of anyone who cares about civil liberties,” they added. “Criminal law that depends on the perception of a passer-by is certainly not the hallmark of a free Scottish society.”

“As we look to the child in the manger this Christmas and Epiphany, we are reminded that babies do not have a voice of their own,” they added. “It is a shame that the State has now also curtailed the voices of ordinary citizens who advocate for them within its borders.”

Cocaine use in Northern Ireland has got so bad that most rivers and lakes in the Province are awash with it. 

Research by Imperial College London and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) found the Class A drug in 91 per cent of the 140 samples they took from rivers and lakes across the region.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland reported 1,353 seizures of cocaine between September 2024 and 2025. It is the most commonly used illegal drug in the nation, according to Northern Ireland’s Substance Misuse Database 2023-24.

Lead author of the research, Dr Billy Hunter, said he was surprised to find cocaine detected “broadly everywhere”, and not just in high population areas like around Belfast.

He said that the findings showed illegal drug abuse is not “solely an urban problem; they are present right across Northern Ireland”.

Dr Hunter added: “One of the interesting things is actually the fact that it was showing up quite strongly in places like Lough Erne, which is maybe because it’s a recreation hotspot.”

Tom McGrath, whose 22-year-old son Matthew was found dead in County Armagh in 2024, highlighted the harms of cocaine earlier this year when he spoke to BBC Radio Ulster calling for a clampdown on drug dealers.

The penalty for possessing the Class A drug is up to seven years in prison, while supply may result in a life sentence.

But the father explained: “How many times do you see them going before the courts and getting custodial sentences? The dealers and suppliers aren’t being prosecuted properly.”