This would appear to be good news, though it’s noticeable that the North-East still has a much higher rate than the rest of the country:

These rates are clearly still high, but at least they’re moving in the right direction. Clearly, someone’s forgotten to point that out to the Daily Mail, who are reporting that

The number of teenage girls getting pregnant has risen, new statistics show.

The difference is that the Times take the logical approach of reporting the pregnancy rate, whereas The Daily Mail choose to report using the raw figures, which it is clearly absurd to compare year-on-year. But they have done. So either they’re bottom of the maths class, or they just want to scaremonger. You decide.

More controversial is the bit tagged on to the Times article:

Abortions are at an all-time high, reaching 18.6 per 1,000 women in March last year. The number aged 30-34 having abortions doubled between 1976 and 2003, to 14,600. The total number of all ages having abortions in 2003 was 190,700.

I don’t have a problem with this, but I’m fairly sure someone will have. And to think, the Daily Mail wouldn’t have needed to fiddle the figures if it had just gotten its knickers in a twist about this.