No one makes vast swaths of new friends by registering their pro-abortion views. I’d always known that - but I found out for certain after blogging, last year, on Times Online’s Alphamummy blog, about my own experiences. Personally I saw then, and I do now, that abortion is usually a decision taken calmly, sanely and rationally; and while its very existence is viewed with distress by many commentators, the person most directly involved - the woman - knows that it is, by far, the lesser of two possible evils.

And so, to the latest statistics on teenage abortion. Let’s face it, the rise in teenage abortion is not the scandalous statistic here. It is, ultimately, the teenage pregnancies that are the problem. Why are these pregnancies occurring? There are a host of socioeconomic and cultural reasons - not least that the Western attitude to teenage sexuality is confused and ultimately contradictory. On the one hand, teenage girls are viewed as the epitome of sexual desirability - and on the other hand those teenage girls who actually have, or want, sex are socially risky and nondesirable.

Almost exactly half of the cause of teenage pregnancies - teenage boys - rarely, if ever, get mentioned. In addition, the continuing presumption that contraception is the responsibility of the female does, perhaps, explain why these girls are using abortion as a contraceptive. Using a condom involves discussion with your sexual partner. Abortion, bluntly, does not.

But while these might be thoughtless, unhappy, chaotic teenage girls, at least they have the sense to acknowledge that they are not ready to become mothers. While many may bemoan teenage girls having serial abortions, a grimmer story by far, surely, would be that of teenage girls having a series of children they were unready and unable to care for.

Instead of looking down on these teenage girls who opt for an abortion as feckless, we should, almost perversely, be grateful for their decisions. After all, nearly every single negative consequence of abortion - emotional, social and the risk to future reproductive health - has an impact solely on the women having these abortions.

They, very kindly - and potentially at great cost to themselves - make what could be a problem for us all, simply vanish.

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