Abortion eclipses a public health triumph
In 1800, roughly one in three children died before their fifth birthday, reflecting an under-five mortality rate (U5MR) of 329 deaths per 1,000 live births. Faced with such high child mortality, women had just under six children on average to ensure that some survived to adulthood—a stark contrast to today’s average of just 1.45.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, sustained advances in sanitation, housing, nutrition, vaccination programmes, and maternal and child healthcare led to a dramatic decline in the UK’s under-five mortality rate. From over 200 deaths per 1,000 live births at the start of the 1900s, the rate fell to just 5 by 2022.
It is a sobering irony that, despite two centuries of progress in reducing child mortality, the legalisation of abortion in 1967 has marked a new reversal. By 2020, the abortion rate per 1,000 live births had surpassed the under-five mortality rate recorded in 1800—when one in three children died before their fifth birthday; in 2022, the most recent year for which we have official data, there were 415 abortions per 1,000 live births. What was once a triumph of public health has, in numerical terms, been eclipsed.