Ellen Manning, 42, is childless, having had two abortions, but has complained that “those of us who choose not to be mums… are forgotten about not just on Mother’s Day but on every other day of the year… Where’s my card? My flowers? My daffodils on a tray?
Mrs Manning said that she’s had two abortions. “I don’t have kids, it’s my choice, and I’ve had two terminations”, she wrote in an article published this weekend.
She explains that she and her husband “weren’t ready – we realised we didn’t want children at all… I’ve been through the painful journey.”
Despite deciding not to have children, Mrs Manning complained that she feels left out on Mother’s Day
“Where is the tiny bit of acknowledgement for all the good things childless women contribute to society – where is our day?” she writes.
“I have devoted hours to baby showers, endured endless lunches with sticky-fingered toddlers throwing food around, and got myself stuck on slides at soft play, making sure friends with kids know I will always show up for them, no matter what…
“But I’ll get nothing in return…
“It’s a one-way street and I don’t get the same recognition, or care, because I haven’t had a child.”
Despite missing out on the stresses and fatigue of being a parent, Mrs Manning said that she sits “in awkward silence as mum friends talk about their kids for hours, either oblivious or not caring that I am unable to participate because I don’t have any”. Her article cited a Morgan Stanley study estimating that 45 per cent of women aged 25-44 will be childless and single by 2030.
50.1 per cent of women born in 1990 in England and Wales were childless as they turned 30 in 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Women born in 1941 were the age cohort most likely to have had at least one baby by the age of thirty at 82 per cent. Meanwhile, the abortion rate in England and Wales reached an all-time high in 2022 at over a quarter of a million babies aborted in twelve months, an annual rise of 17 per cent.
In 2022, medical abortion accounted for 86 per cent of all abortions, up from 48 per cent in 2012. Abortions taking place entirely at home increased by 9 per cent between 2021 and 2022, amounting to 61 per cent of all abortions.
Over ten million unborn babies have been killed by abortion since the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act.
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