Image Source: Envato
Cuba recorded almost as many abortions as live births in 2025, according to newly published government figures, as one of the last bastions of Marxist-Leninist government is plunged into a severe demographic crisis.
Figures released by Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health reveal that 64,850 abortions were performed last year, compared with just 68,064 live births, equivalent to almost 95 abortions for every 100 babies born.
The ratio, which reached 94.8 abortions per 100 births, is the highest recorded since 1986 and represents a significant increase from 2024, when the figure stood at 90.1.
Although the total number of abortions remained stable, rising slightly from 64,764 in 2024, the continued decline in births has skewed the ratio to its highest level in four decades.
The figures emerge amid a worsening population crisis in Cuba, where deaths now substantially outnumber births. In 2025, the country recorded 136,214 deaths, almost exactly twice the number of babies born.
Cuba’s population has consequently fallen to approximately 9.43 million, having declined by more than 313,000 people in a single year, driven by emigration and a growing imbalance between births and deaths.
Meanwhile, the country’s wider healthcare system is showing signs of deterioration. The number of women receiving up-to-date cervical screening fell by more than 77 per cent between 2018 and 2025, while deaths from cervical cancer increased from 479 to 506.
The latest abortion figures are particularly striking given Cuba’s demographic decline. For every 100 children born alive, almost 95 pregnancies were deliberately terminated.
In Britain the same figure is 46 abortions per 100 live births, with it peaking in the cities of Liverpool and Brighton at 68 abortions per 100 live births.
SPUC’s Executive Director Michael Robinson says, “The statistics out of Cuba are a travesty. One baby killed is alarming, but for an abortion rate to overtake a birth rate is surely the death pangs of a failed society. While its easy to look on to countries like Cuba with their totalitarian regimes we cannot get complacent in Britain or the West. With some of our youngest cities showing abortion rates of 68 per 100 live births we are on the same trajectory as Cuba. Our society has devalued life and become desensitised to the mass killing of the next generation. We will be like Cuba very soon unless we have a political and cultural renewal that puts babies first. That is SPUC’s mission.”
