A quarter of all pregnancies in England and Wales now end in abortion, official data revealed today.
The figure is the highest since records began in 1990, and marks the first time it has ever breached the 25 per cent mark.
Around 207,000 of the 821,000 pregnancies conceived in 2019 were terminated, the Office for National Statistics said.
Teenage abortions hit their highest level ever, with almost two-thirds of conceptions terminated among under-16s.
But rates increased across the board, including among women in their 30s and 40s — the only age groups where conception rates are higher than they were a decade ago.
Women are increasingly putting off starting a family in their twenties when they are more fertile, often delaying motherhood to focus on their careers.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) data released today shows a record 25 per cent of pregnancies conceived in 2019 were terminated
Separate Department of Health figures show some 210,860 abortions were carried out in England and Wales last year.
It suggests the figure — which has co-incided with a drop in conception rates over the past decade — will continue to rise.
Over-40s have bucked the trend, however, with rates having tripled since the 1990s.
And the proportion of women in their late 30s has nearly doubled across the same time-frame.
But the ONS figures today suggest the rise was actually driven by younger age groups, with the proportion of abortions in people aged 40 and over only increasing from 30.3 per cent to 30.8 per cent.
For comparison, the proportion increased from 35 per cent to 37.3 per cent in people aged 20 to 24 and 21.4 per cent to 22.5 per cent in people aged 25 to 29.
The total number of abortions in girls aged under 16 were at their second lowest since last year, with 1,522 occurring in both countries. It was a slight increase on the year before (1,487).
Regionally, abortions were highest in London, where they made up 28.1 per cent of the 156,716 pregnancies in the capital — 44,037.
