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Termination of Pregnancy in Scotland

Annual update of terminations of pregnancy in Scotland.

Terminations are carried out under the terms of the Abortion Act 1967 with two doctors agreeing that a termination of pregnancy is necessary under at least one of the Grounds as specified in the 1991 Regulations. There is a legal requirement on service providers to notify the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland (CMO) of all terminations under-taken in Scotland. Prior to 1st May 2022 PHS received termination data from the CMO. Since 1st May 2022 PHS has received this data direct from termination services on the Termination of Pregnancy Submissions Scotland (ToPSS) system. An abortion can be induced (therapeutic) or spontaneous (miscarriage) and may be carried out either surgically (eg vacuum aspiration, dilation and curettage) or medically using two drugs, an antiprogesterone and a prostaglandin. This report focuses only on induced abortions. We also refer to these as terminations of pregnancy to avoid confusion with spontaneous abortions.

Information is provided by age, gestation, method of termination, NHS board of residence, deprivation area, previous termination and council area of residence.

For more information on terminations of pregnancy see the terminations section of the PHS website and the annual publication. For related topics, please see the sexual health pages.

The date of the next release can be found on our list of forthcoming publications.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Source Termination of Pregnancy Submissions Scotland (ToPSS)
Author Maternity & Sexual Health team
Last Updated May 28, 2024, 15:08 (BST)
Created March 17, 2020, 14:49 (GMT)
Contact Address Public Health Scotland, Gyle Square, 1 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh, EH12 9EB
Subject Sexual Health
Frequency Annual
Time frame of data and timeliness Terminations carried out up to December 2023; extract taken at the beginning of April for May publication).
Coverage Includes surveillance data entered on ToPSS by NHS boards for terminations of pregnancy carried out in Scotland.
Completeness There may be a small number of terminations that are in draft format on ToPSS, or have not been entered at the time the final data extract is taken from ToPSS. Data are refreshed for the next annual update.
Accuracy The ToPSS system has in-built validation that can flag and query errors or questionable data. PHS also routinely quality assess data on ToPSS. Statistics are also compared to previous year's figures.
Continuity of data Open data is available from 2000. A new paperless system for collecting termination data was rolled out to NHS boards 1 May 2022. Yellow notification of abortion forms are no longer used.
Concepts and definitions Concepts and definitions are provided in the full report available on the PHS website.
Disclosure The PHS statistical disclosure protocol has been followed.
Revision statement Data keyed after the data extract has been taken are included in the next annual report, with figures being revised at this next update.
Official statistics designation National Statistics
Relevance and key uses of the statistics Making information publicly available for planning, epidemiology, provision of services, monitoring standards, and the statistics provide comparative information.
Format csv
Language English
Links

PHS - Sexual Health

Termination of Pregnancy publications