New figures released by the Department of Health in the UK show that girls as young as 12 years are getting pregnant and resorting to abortion.
The figures reveal that each year 10 to 15 girls aged 12 have abortions.Some doctors were disappointed to see the figures, but family planning experts said society needed to ’stop being shocked’ that children were having sex and becoming pregnant.
"This is a tiny number of girls. Children grow up very quickly in our society. They are maturing faster physically, psychologically and socially, and society just has to come to terms with that," Times Online quoted Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which runs a chain of abortion clinics, as saying.
"Both parents and teachers need to be able to provide them with the sex education information they need," Furedi added.
According to Dr Rhona Knight, a GP in Leicester, girls are being put under pressure to have sex at such a young age.
"In my experience girls are not choosing to have sex; it is just happening. The message given out is that the boys will use a condom or the girls can go on the pill, but they end up pregnant, which is extremely sad. We need to empower these girls to realise that they do not need to have sex at that age," she said.
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It also revealed that 138 girls aged 13 had abortions in 2003, which increased to 142 in 2004.
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