The summer holiday is always a bit of a non-event when it comes to news. With Westminster on recess and chief editors retreating to their second homes, deputy staff members stretch out stories like used bits of cling film until their bosses return. Be it the Bibby Stockholm barge sitting in a Dorset dock, desperate attempts to show concrete crumbling before our eyes, or (my personal favourite) a man who reported a still yoga class to the police thinking a mass shooting had occurred; news teams will do anything to make static stories move.
All the while there there have been significant developments over the summer that receive no attention. The most substantial of these was a discovery that half of all generation Z or “zoomer” pregnancies now end in abortion. The research conducted by Kevin Duffy, a former Global Director of Clinics Marie Stopes International, compared ONS data with abortion statistics between 2012 and 2022. He found that abortion rates among 15–26 year olds have increased from 34 per cent in 2012 to 50 per cent in 2022. For anyone who is concerned about the physical, and particularly mental health of Gen Z, this is concerning to say the least. It was only in July that Professor Colman’s finding — “81 per cent increased risk of mental health problems” following abortion — reignited a public row, after the British Journal of Psychiatry refused (for a second time) to withdraw it. A month previous a large new US study found “[a] first pregnancy abortion, compared to a birth, is associated with significantly higher subsequent mental health services utilisation following the first pregnancy outcome”. The other side disagrees firmly, arguing that it is abortion restrictions that cause psychological harm, not the abortions themselves.
