Thousands of teenagers have had repeat abortions, with three girls having had at least seven each, shocking figures have revealed.
Pro-life groups lamented the statistics, which were released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Press Association.
Rebecca Mallinson, of the Pro Life Alliance, warned: “We are failing these young people in an appalling way, and storing up serious sexual health problems for the future, whether the direct issue of sexually transmitted diseases, but also the effects that multiple abortions can have on future fertility.”
Serious
And campaign group LIFE said: “Abortion is a serious procedure, one which all sides of the abortion debate agree should not be undertaken lightly.
“Yet here we have young women, still not fully mature physiologically and emotionally, undergoing abortions numerous times.”
The figures, which relate to England and Wales in 2010, show that nearly 40,000 teenagers had an abortion in that year.
Of those, more than 5,300 were for girls who had already had at least one abortion.
Traumatic
A Department of Health spokesman said: “Having an abortion can be a very difficult and traumatic experience so we are very concerned about the number of women having multiple abortions.”
In March this year a self-proclaimed supporter of the Abortion Act has admitted that abortion has become trivial for many people.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, he disclosed that there were some he knew in the medical profession who had approved abortions for pregnant women simply because they “did not want their holidays spoilt by pregnancy”.
The commentator and former doctor, writing under his pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, said people now view life as an existential supermarket in which they are consumers.