The two child policy punishes poor people by cutting their benefits if they have more than two children. The amount lost per effected child is up to £2,780 annually.
It has led to unprecedented levels of abortion of otherwise wanted babies, the #1 reason for abortions in two or more existing child families on benefits (57%).
Women described feeling significant regret and sadness because they felt unable to continue what was a wanted pregnancy due to the policy.
Since the policy was introduced, the proportion of abortions to women with 2 or more children has risen by 16.4%, a significantly larger increase than in other groups (Dec 2020).
Since then the number of abortions keeps rising, in July 2021 Clare Murphy, Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS, said:
“The rapidly increasing number of families affected by this cruel and regressive policy is deeply concerning.
“We have warned the government that the two-child limit is forcing some women to end what would otherwise be wanted pregnancies. Since 2016, the number of abortions performed to women with two or more existing children has risen by 24%, compared with an increase of 11% performed to women with one existing child.
“The policy assumes that couples are always able to neatly plan pregnancies with the use of contraception, and that they can also plan their financial circumstances for the 18 years following the birth of their child. Even prior to the pandemic, this was far from the case.
“Especially within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has deepened already-existing inequality and created huge economic uncertainty, the two-child limit forces women and their families into a corner between increasing financial hardship or ending a wanted pregnancy. We call on the government to revoke the policy as a matter of urgency.”
I couldn't afford to feed or clothe it...
One woman described how the two child policy forced her to have an abortion even though she wanted to keep the baby:
“If there was no two-child limit I would have kept the baby, but I couldn’t afford to feed and clothe it… I did something I never imagined I would ever do… thanks to that rule I was forced to make this decision… I’ve really struggled to come to terms with [my decision].”
The governments justification for the policy is to get women back to work, but nearly 70% of families who are in receipt of child tax credits are already in work.
The Child Poverty Action Group sums up the situation succinctly: ‘if you set out to design a policy to increase child poverty, then it would be hard to do much better than the two-child limit’.
Source
- https://www.bpas.org/get-involved/campaigns/briefings/the-two-child-limit-on-welfare-supports/
- https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/03/two-child-limit-on-benefits-a-key-factor-in-many-abortion-decisions-says-charity
- https://www.bpas.org/about-our-charity/press-office/press-releases/research-finds-that-the-two-child-limit-is-a-significant-factor-in-women-s-decision-to-end-a-pregnancy-during-the-pandemic/
- https://www.bpas.org/about-our-charity/press-office/press-releases/numbers-of-families-affected-by-two-child-limit-rises-amid-concerns-about-link-with-abortion-numbers/
- https://bpas.org/media/3409/forced-into-a-corner-the-two-child-limit-and-pregnancy-decision-making-during-the-pandemic.pdf
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