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Sir Michael McNair-Wilson
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what proportion of the foetuses aborted during 1988–89 showed signs of handicap or disability.
Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
This information is not collected centrally, but in 1988, the latest full year for which figures are available, 1,797 abortions were performed in which the ground of substantial risk of the child being born seriously handicapped was mentioned by the certifying medical practitioners. The provisional equivalent figure for the first six months of 1989 is 818.