Wednesday 9th July 2025
Katherine O’Brien, Head of Campaigns and Communications at BPAS, said:
“Women are facing significant barriers when trying to access contraception, including long wait times and difficulties securing appointments. At BPAS, we regularly hear form women who are seeking an abortion after falling pregnant while waiting for repeat Pill prescriptions or coil insertions. Emergency contraception, while not a silver bullet to unplanned pregnancy rates, remains an underutilised resource in this country, with the majority of women not accessing this vital back-up method after an episode of unprotected sex. The government has committed to improving access via pharmacies, but we need to see this medication reclassified so that it can be sold in a wider range of outlets, including supermarkets, so that women can access it as swiftly as possible when needed.
In 2022, many households were hit by interest rate hikes and huge increases in cost of living. Faced with these challenges, women and their partners had to make sometimes tough decisions around continuing or ending a pregnancy. Unfortunately, financial struggles and a lack of government support, including the two-child limit on financial assistance, continue to force women to choose between ending an otherwise wanted pregnancy or plunging their families in to great hardship.
No woman should have to end a pregnancy she would otherwise have continued purely for financial reasons, and no woman should become pregnant because our healthcare system is failing to provide women with the contraception they want, when they need it. There is no right number of abortions, but there is much more that the government can do ensure that women are able to make the decisions that are right for themselves and for their families.”
The full dataset can be found in the ONS report online here: Conceptions in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics
For further comment, please contact Katherine O’Brien, Head of Campaigns and Communications at BPAS, on 07881 265276 or email katherine.obrien@bpas.org
About BPAS
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS, is a charity that sees over 100,000 women a year for reproductive healthcare services including pregnancy counselling, abortion care, miscarriage management and contraception at clinics across Great Britain.
BPAS exists to further women’s reproductive choices. We believe all women should have the right to make their own decisions in and around pregnancy, from the contraception they use to avoid pregnancy right the way through to how they decide to feed their newborn baby, with access to evidence-based information to underpin their choices and high-quality services and support to exercise them.
BPAS also runs the Centre for Reproductive Research and Communication, CRRC. Through rigorous multidisciplinary research and impactful communication, the CRRC aims to inform policy, practice, and public discourse. You can find out more here.