Elon Musk has expressed his shock at the news that the 2023 abortion statistics revealed that almost one in three of all pregnancies in the UK ended in abortion during that year.
Yesterday, after an 18-month delay, the Department of Health and Social Care released the abortion statistics for England and Wales for 2023, revealing that 278,740 abortions took place during the year. When these are combined with the number of abortions in Northern Ireland and Scotland, the total number of abortions in the UK in 2023 can be estimated as 299,614.*
ProLife commentators focused on the total number of pregnancies ending in abortion relative to the total number of pregnancies ending in a live birth.
Given there were a total of 656,969 live births in the UK in 2023, this means that approximately 31.32% of all pregnancies, almost one in three, ended in abortion in 2023 (excluding instances of miscarriage and stillbirth).
In apparent disbelief about this stark figure and the low fertility rate in the UK, Elon Musk said “Wow”. The world's richest man is well-known for his outspoken concern about falling birth rates.