Table 1.

After England and Wales, the most common foreign country where Irish women received abortions has been the Netherlands. Dutch government agencies do not record abortions on Irish women specifically. There are official records on Belgian, Spanish and German women having abortions in the Netherlands, but none for Irish women. The data in the below chart contains historical data released by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, which was inputted by individual Dutch abortion clinics and is not reliable. Global abortion statistics often overlook the different nationalities which have abortions in countries different to their own. 

After England and Wales, the most common foreign country where Irish women received abortions has been the Netherlands. Dutch government agencies do not record abortions on Irish women specifically. There are official records on Belgian, Spanish and German women having abortions in the Netherlands, but none for Irish women. The data in the below chart contains historical data released by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, which was inputted by individual Dutch abortion clinics and is not reliable.

Table 2.

Number of Notifications made to the Minister for Health

The below figures show the number of notifications made to the Minister for Health from 2014 to date. These figures are supposed to be authoritative for the number of abortions performed in Ireland, however, they are inaccurate as evidenced by the larger proportion of abortion reimbursements claimed by GPs in each year except 2019 (Table 4).

The official Irish abortion figures from 2014-2018 consist of notifications of abortions made to the Minister for Health under the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013. The figures from 2019 onwards relate to the number of notifications of abortions made to the Minister for Health and included in the report issued by the Department of Health under the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018.

Table 3.

Number of GP Claims Made

The below data shows the number of claims made by General Practitioners related to abortion under the HSE’s Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS) scheme. “Combined termination procedure” refers to an abortion completed by a GP, which essentially means the number of abortions per year.

Table 4.

The below three Irish hospitals are the only hospitals in Ireland which publish, in their annual reports, the abortion count for each of the hospitals performed each year. Data on termination of pregnancy statistics in the Rotunda, the Coombe, and the National Maternity Hospital (Holles Street) are found below.

Hospitals’ Annual Reports of Abortions Performed

The below three Irish hospitals are the only hospitals in Ireland which publish, in their annual reports, the number of abortions performed per year. Data on abortions performed in the Rotunda, the Coombe, and the National Maternity Hospital (Holles Street) are found below.

Table 5.

A comparison of abortion and birth rates shows the devastating impact of abortion on Irish society. Official statistics show that in 2023 there was a decrease in the number of registered births in Ireland, from 68,930 in 2013 to 54,678 in 2023. The fertility rate was also found to have declined from 2.0 in 2013 to 1.5 in 2023. According to the Department of Health’s annual abortion notifications report (a report widely understood to be inaccurate and flawed), there were ostensibly 10,033 abortions in Ireland in 2023. With this figure taken at face value, it would mean that of all pregnancies in Ireland last year 15.5% of them ended in abortion. This of course does not include miscarriages. 

Interest in abortion rates globally and the abortion number domestically has become more pronounced since the overturn of Roe v Wade in 2022. During the period from 1973 until 2022, Roe v Wade statistics made clear that abortion had a dramatic impact, with 63,459,781 abortions recorded during this time. In 2022, the year Roe v Wade was overturned, Planned Parenthood statistics showed they performed an all time high number of abortions: 383,460, up from 354,871 the previous year. According to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, roughly 121 million unintended pregnancies occurred each year between 2015 and 2019. Of these, unintended pregnancies, 61% ended in abortion. The number of abortions per year worldwide thus translates to 73 million abortions per year.  

In 2022 in Ireland, 1 in 8 pregnancies (12%) ended in abortion. As we can see, the figure is now even higher with 1 in 6 babies being aborted in 2023. The prevalence of abortion and the shockingly high abortion rate failed to make it into most analyses in the media which touched on the dropping birth rate in 2023. The percentage of abortions to the birth rate makes for difficult reading. 

The current abortion statistics have not yet been released for 2024, but early indicators show abortion trends are leading towards yet another ‘record-breaking’ year. From January to May 2024, there were a total of 4,424 abortions performed, according to abortion trends reflected in the number of compensation claims made by GPs for terminations in the first five months of 2024. The number of abortions per year has climbed rapidly in the past few years, with 2024 on course to exceed well over 10,000.