Gymslip mums are on the decline in England and Wales, where there has been a leap in the number of very young girls having abortions.

Official figures released today showed that 4,376 girls under the age of 16 terminated a pregnancy in England and Wales in 2007 — a rise of 10 per cent on the 3,990 abortions the previous year.

Among the very young, girls aged under 14, numbers have increased from 135 to 163, a jump of 21 per cent.

The increase in school-age abortions comes at a time when the teenage pregnancy rate in England is at its lowest for 20 years, suggesting that young girls who become pregnant are choosing increasingly to seek a termination rather than go through with the pregnancy.

Abortions rose overall last year by 2.5 per cent across all women, but the increase among schoolchildren was the greatest.

The 4,376 underage pregnancies terminated in England and Wales last year remain a small but worrying proportion of the 198,500 abortions that took place in 2007, accounting for 2.2 per cent of the total.

The Government set a target in 2000 of cutting Britain's teenage pregnancy rates by half by 2010. Conceptions among under-18s have been falling in recent years, but the Government's goal remains a very challenging one. In 1998, there were 46.6 pregnancies per 1,000 girls in that age group. In 2006, the last year for which figures are available, it had dropped to 40.7 per 1,000.

This, combined with the fact that the abortion rate for this group has risen to 20 per 1,000, according to today's figures, means that there are now several thousand fewer teenage mothers, but Britain's teenage pregnancy rate is still the highest in Western Europe.

Gill Frances, chair of the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, urged the Government to do more to prevent very young girls getting pregnant in the first place. “We know what works to reduce abortion among teenagers," said Ms Frances. “We need high-quality sex and relationships education at school and at home, and effective contraception.

“Primary care trusts [PCTs] must ensure they are investing in contraceptive services for young people. The Department of Health recently allocated £13 million to PCTs to improve contraceptive services, but many of them have been unable to locate the money, which was not ring-fenced and not flagged up.

“In view of today’s abortion figures, it is critical that investment in contraception is urgently reviewed and the recent monies located.”

Today's figures are likely to stir up the controversy that surrounds the issue of abortion. MPs last month rejected calls to lower the upper time limit for a termination from its current level of 24 weeks.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the charity BPAS (the British Pregnancy Advisory Service), urged the public not to judge women too harshly for falling accidentally pregnant, or to restrict the availability of abortion. “Women try hard to avoid becoming pregnant when they don’t want to become a mother, or aren’t able to bring up a child, but unintended pregnancy still remains a significant public health problem," she said.

“Every form of contraception has a failure rate and sometimes couples can fail to use contraception properly. Women who are then faced with a difficult decision about a pregnancy need the option of accessible abortion care available to them as early as possible - and as late as necessary.

"Unfortunately, the existing legal framework can actively work to delay some women from treatment.”

Medical abortions, involving the use of pills rather than surgery, now account for more than one third of all terminations, at 35 per cent, up from 30 per cent in 2006.

Women are also having their abortions at an earlier stage of their pregnancy, as NHS waiting lists for the procedure shorten.

Dawn Primarolo, the Health Minister, said: “Our priority is to reduce the time women have to wait for an abortion at what is already a very difficult time for them. These statistics show that we have made considerable progress in this, with over two-thirds of women having their abortion at under ten weeks in 2007, up from half in 2002.

“Contraception plays a vital role in preventing teenage pregnancy and earlier this year I announced a further investment of £26.8 million to improve women’s access to contraception and help reduce the number of abortions, repeat abortions and teenage pregnancies.”

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