Britain is facing an abortions crisis with growing numbers of doctors "intolerant" of women seeking terminations because they see them as too lazy to use contraception, doctors and family planning services said today.
Many young doctors are unwilling to provide terminations because they believe there is no good excuse for unwanted pregnancies, according to Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS - formerly the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.
She said: "Younger doctors can be judgemental. They don't see why they should have to - as one put it to me - clear up the mess if women can't be bothered to use contraception."
Ms Furedi said this view was "relatively widespread" among younger doctors. She said many doctors failed to appreciate that contraception sometimes failed or people did not use it properly.
Her comments came as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists warned there was a growing shortage of doctors trained to carry out abortions.
Changes to junior doctors' hours and training, introduced two years ago, mean they can pick and choose which areas of medicine to train in - and very few opt to carry out terminations, according to the Royal College.
The college and family planning charities believe that women could face serious difficulties in accessing abortion services in five or six years' time if the trend continues.
At least a third of British women will have had an abortion by the time they reach the age of 45, according to the Royal College.
At least 50% of pregnancies in the UK are unplanned and around a fifth of conceptions are terminated despite over 70% of women aged 16-49 using some form of contraception, according to the National Statistics office.
The charity Marie Stoppes, which provides family planning and abortion services, said they were already experiencing difficulties in recruiting doctors to carry out terminations.
A spokeswoman for the charity said younger doctors did not recognise the benefits of providing terminations because they did not know the dire situation faced by women before abortion was legalised in the 1960s.
She said: "We do have a problem already. One reason is the doctors are too young to be aware of the situation before the 1967 Abortion Act. It would be ideal to train experienced nurses to perform abortions."
A BPAS spokeswoman added that many of its doctors were of the generation who remembered the problems caused by backstreet abortions and were now nearing retirement.
Both charities denied the shortage of doctors was due to a significant increase in conscientious objectors. Doctors have always been able to opt out of doing abortions on religious grounds. But, since the 1990s, guidance issued by the Faculty of Family Planning and the Royal College has included a conscientious objection clause.
Kate Guthrie, a consultant gynaecologist and spokeswoman for the Royal College, said junior doctors were opting out of abortion because "there's other stuff they find more interesting to do".
