XI'AN (China) - While comprehensive data is hard to come by, official figures show abortions are increasing in China and Chinese media and experts say many, if not most, of the abortion-seekers are young, unmarried women.

That is a change from the past, when abortion was used mainly to enforce the government's one child per couple limit. Today, students are clearly a client base: The Beijing Modern Women's Hospital offers a government-subsidised "Safe & Easy A+" discount abortion package at 880 yuan ($172). Others advertise in college handbooks.

According to a government tally, 9.2 million abortions were performed in 2008, up from 7.6 million in 2007. But the count only includes hospitals and state media report the total could be as high as 13 million. Demographer Li Shuzhuo, from the Institute for Population and Development Studies in Xi'an, says there has been a big shift from post-marriage to pre-marriage abortions over the past 10 years.

Many blame the trend on newly liberal attitudes toward premarital sex and lagging sex education. Bureaucratic red tape and social stigma also deter single women from having a child on their own and laws bar women from marriage until they are 20, making teen pregnancy virtually unheard of. These factors and a lack of stigma surrounding abortion, or "artificial miscarriage", as it is known here, have helped make it a relatively cheap, widely available option for birth control.

"The moral outrage over having a child before marriage in our society is much stronger than the shame associated with abortion,'' said Ms Zhou Anqin, the manager at a clinic in Xi'an, which performs about 60 abortions each month, mostly on students aged 24 or younger.

The facility is one of five operated in China by Marie Stopes International, a non-profit group that runs clinics globally promoting safe abortions, HIV testing and other services. Marie Stopes frequently sees repeat customers such as Ms Zhang Jie, 22, who recently had her second abortion in as many years.

In an examination room, student Ms Nancy Yin, 20, looks away from the image on the machine: A nearly three-month-old foetus with arms, legs, and a fluttering heartbeat. Ms Yin and her boyfriend never used contraceptives because she "did not feel comfortable with it". Her parents never talked to her about birth control, nor was it discussed in school.

China's efficient family planning network promotes contraception and meticulously logs births, abortions and sterilisations - but it focuses mainly on married couples.

Young people like Ms Yin are falling through the cracks. A UN-funded survey of 22,288 Chinese aged between 15 and 24 by the Peking University Population Research Institute in 2009 found that two-thirds were accepting of premarital sex but that most "had very limited levels of sexual reproductive health knowledge".

Ms Yin leaves with pills and an abortion appointment three days later. Ms Zhou explains that the pills will kill the fetus and soften Ms Yin's cervix. "It's like preparing the ground before you pull out a sapling. If you pour water on the ground first, it will loosen the soil and make it much easier."

The Chinese can be brutally frank when it comes to abortion. Beijing sociologist Li Yinhe noted that "people generally feel that before the actual birth, you don't yet have an actual person, so we have cases of induced abortion at seven and eight months along ... China has absolutely no need for the so-called 'right to life' argument, no need to introduce ideas about abortion as murder and so on.''AP