Illegal Abortion (1744A/23)
Request
In the years 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23.
Could you please provide the number of offences recorded for:
1. Procuring illegal abortion – administering or using drugs or using instruments to procure abortion (Offence code: 01401); In each case could you please include the gender of the suspect and the outcome, e.g. charged, no further action, etc.
2. Procuring illegal abortion – procuring drugs etc. to cause abortion (Offence code: 01402); In each case could you please include the gender of the suspect and the outcome, e.g. charged, no further action, etc.
Response
We can confirm that West Midlands Police holds information within the scope of your request, and we are disclosing all that information (please see attached).
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.