Abortions in Ireland have spiked in the space of just five years, government figures have revealed. Source: Catholic Review.
Statistics released by the Department of Health showed that 10,852 abortions were performed in Ireland in 2024 – representing a 62.8 per cent increase over the 6666 abortions performed in 2019, when a law permitting abortion on demand in Ireland came into effect following a 2018 referendum on legal abortion.
The latest figure is a record high for Ireland, a 8.16 per cent surge over the 10,033 abortions carried out in Ireland in 2023.
Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin and Achonry said in a July 18 statement the Irish government “has done nothing to reduce the numbers of abortions … and seems not to care why women choose abortion, or what happens to them afterwards,” adding that “abortion harms women and babies alike”.
“In a world in which freedom of conscience and the right to peaceful protest are widely promoted and recognised, Irish healthcare professionals are penalised if they refuse to refer their clients for abortion, and citizens risk criminal prosecution if they engage in peaceful protest, even though the Garda Siochana (National Police) said that they did not need this legislation,” he said.
“People who seek to uphold the right to life feel quite disenfranchised in Ireland,” Bishop Doran continued.
“In many constituencies in Ireland in the last General Election, there was no candidate who clearly opposed abortion as a matter of principle. The good news, however, was that most of the Oireachtas Members (members of parliament) who had consistently voted against abortion, were re-elected.”
The bishop added: “Most of the same arguments that were used to legitimise abortion seven years ago are now being used to justify a change in the law to allow assisted suicide and euthanasia. When we said this in the past we were ridiculed, but it is absolutely clear now how right we were.”
The figures were released days after UK government statistics revealed that nearly 1 in 3 conceptions in England and Wales now ends in abortion.
FULL STORY
Ireland’s abortion rates rise 62 per cent over 5 years; Catholic advocates call it ‘a tragedy’ (By Simon Caldwell, OSV News via Catholic Review)
