Abortion statistics in England and Wales
Data sets and publications relating to abortion statistics for England and Wales.
Office for Statistics Regulation compliance review
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) completed a compliance review of the Abortion statistics in England and Wales publication in April 2026. The review assessed whether the statistics continued to meet the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value under the Code of Practice for Statistics, particularly given the time since the statistics were last assessed and subsequent changes to legislation and data processing systems.
The review concluded that “the statistics on abortions for England and Wales continue to meet the standards set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should retain their accredited official statistics status”.
The report also made recommendations for further improvements - see the full OSR compliance review of abortion statistics for England and Wales.
Delay to 2024 statistics
The ‘Abortion statistics for England and Wales 2024’ publication is delayed due to several operational issues. These include several technical challenges that have significantly reduced our ability to process paper HSA4 notifications efficiently. This coincided with an increase in the overall number of abortion notifications the department receives each year.
Together, these factors have created a backlog of data that still requires processing and quality assurance. The data is being validated but the resulting delays to the publication timetable have impacted the timeliness of the now published 2023 statistics and continue to delay publication of 2024 and 2025 statistics.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is currently working to deliver an improved service for collecting abortion notifications, designed to support more efficient processing of abortion data and enable more timely publications.
The statistics will be published once the required processing and quality assurance checks have been completed. We will announce the date for publication of the 2024 statistics in due course.
In England and Wales, within the terms of the Abortion Act 1967, only a registered practitioner can terminate a pregnancy. Practitioners carrying out an abortion must complete an abortion notification form (HSA4) and submit it to the Chief Medical Officer.
DHSC has a responsibility to monitor the Abortion Act and produce abortion statistics. It has processes in place to check the abortion notification forms and to publish the subsequent data.
Using abortion statistics
With approval from the Chief Medical Officer, the abortion statistics are used for research.
DHSC publishes:
- information on who uses abortion statistics and how they use them
- a guide for academic researchers who want to use abortion statistics: protocol for the release of personal data
- information on the codes used in processing information from the HSA4 forms
Abortion statistics before 2011
Abortion statistics on this site start at 2011. Statistics for previous years are available on The National Archives website.
Contact
To give feedback on ‘Abortion statistics for England and Wales’ or if you have any queries, contact abortion.statistics@dhsc.gov.uk.
Documents
Updates to this page
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Added details about a recent compliance review of the statistics carried out by the Office for Statistics Regulation and further information on the delay to the 2024 statistics.
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Added 'Abortion statistics for England and Wales: 2023'.
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Updated to reflect the confirmed release date of the 2023 statistics.
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Added update on the delay to the publication of abortion statistics for England and Wales 2023 and 2024 publications.
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Removed 'Abortion notification forms for England and Wales' from the collection and added it to the new collection page 'Guidance documents for abortions in England and Wales'.
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Updated link on the second bullet point 'a guide for academic researchers who want to use abortion statistics' and added the new page (Abortion statistics: protocol for the release of personal data) to the collection. The previous protocol has been superseded by a new accessible form and guidance.
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Added 'Abortion statistics for England and Wales: 2022'.
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Added the confirmed publication date of 23 May 2024 for 'Abortion statistics for England and Wales: 2022'.
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Amended the provisional publication date for 'Abortion statistics for England and Wales: 2022' to May 2024.
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Updated to add 'Complications from abortions in England, 2017 to 2021' and to extend the delay in publication of 'Abortion Statistics for England and Wales: 2022' to April 2024.
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Added 'Abortion statistics: England and Wales, January to June 2022'.
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Added announcement on delay of 'Abortion Statistics for England and Wales: 2022'. Added feedback form for views on abortion statistics for England and Wales.
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Added abortion statistics for 2021 to collection.
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Added abortion statistics for 2020 to collection.
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Added abortion statistics for 2018 to collection and updated email address for the abortion statistics team to abortion.statistics@dhsc.gov.uk.
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Added 'Abortion statistics for England and Wales: 2017' to collection.
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Added 2016 abortion statistics.
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First published.