Pro-life campaigners are claiming that way more “murders” are taking place in the womb each year and have made an appeal for greater effort to be thrown behind the ending of abortions locally.

Founder of Pregnancy Resource Centre of Jamaica Christina Milford advanced the argument at a Jamaica Observer Press Club last Friday, saying that while much emphasis is often placed on murder statistics provided by the police, abortions are happening at even more alarming rates and are largely ignored.

Recounting aspects of a dream she got a few years ago, which consequently led to the start of her outreach ministry in Montego Bay, St James, from which she offers shelter and support to women in all forms of distress, Milford said that God, in a message to her, had also indicated some unhappiness with the number of abortions happening across the country.

“People seemed to be so aghast by the number of murders happening in our country yearly but nobody speaks about the untold numbers of my children slaughtered in the womb daily,” she said of the message she received from God in that dream.

Since the early 2000s Jamaica has consistently registered more than 1,000 murders on average annually. According to 2023 crime statistics released by the Jamaica Constabulary Force, almost 1,400 Jamaicans were murdered in that year.

Executed privately from the offices of some medical practitioners and other non-medical, unsanitary facilities, or even by individuals with the use of abortion pills and other bush concoctions, the illegal practice of abortion continues to earn the ire of pro-life advocates who argue that it robs the unborn of the right to life and the country of productivity contributions that would have come from these unborn citizens.

Founder of Love March Movement Dr Daniel Thomas, who for his part stressed that for every three children born in Jamaica, there was another one or two being killed in the womb, said that through his organisation some action is now being taken to increase focus around the issue, considered by many, especially those in the ecumenical community, to be a sacrilegious crime.

“It is a serious situation that we are now in when we look at these statistics, but we are praying that things will change,” he told Observer journalists

Dr Thomas’s reference to prayer is the local activation of the international 40 Days for Life campaign through which Christians campaign to end abortions using prayer and fasting, community outreach, and peaceful 12-hour vigils in front of abortion businesses for a 40-day period.

The pro-life campaigners use the vigils to offer a word of hope and some encouragement to deter as many mothers from aborting their babies in cases where that is the intention. The campaign, which began on February 14, is scheduled to come to an end on March 24.

Dr Thomas, in further pointing to local estimates which show some 10,000 to 22,000 abortions being done each year, said a breakdown of the numbers indicates that about 28 to 60 abortions are taking place across the country daily.

Director of international campaigns at 40 Days for Life Robert Colquhoun pointed to the growing number of deaths as a result of abortions in more developed countries such as Britain and said that over the last 50 years approximately 10 million induced abortions have been done.

Addressing the country’s waning birth rate and its inability to maintain a replacement fertility rate of 2.1 per cent, Dr Thomas said that the number of abortions being done yearly in the country could play a significant role in boosting these numbers if those lives are to be preserved.

“We definitely would not be in this ‘demographic winter’ with which we are now faced with less babies being born,” he stated.