In an answer to a Parliamentary Question asked by Carol Nolan TD, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly recently revealed that €2.9 million of taxpayers’ money was given to doctors who carried out abortions in GP settings in 2019.
This shockingly high figure is not the total amount spent by the state on abortions last year, as it only covers terminations in the first 9 weeks of pregnancy. The €2.9 million thus relates to approximately 6,542 abortions, with doctors getting €450 every single time they carry out an abortion.
Carol Nolan deserves great credit for bringing these payments to light and for continuing to speak up for life following her re-election to the Dáil earlier this year. She defied all predictions in holding her seat in Laois Offaly after being forced to resign from Sinn Féin for defending the right to life in the 2018 abortion referendum.
The figure of €2.9 million for early abortions is particularly shocking because it is nearly equal to the amount spent on the National Women and Infants Health Programme in 2019 (€3.1 million).
What does this say about our Government – that it spends the same amount of money on infant health as on early abortions? If the health and safety of women and children are a priority in our health system, then why is there so much money being spent on rewarding GPs who provide abortion ‘services’.
Abortion was introduced in Ireland on the basis of a supposed need to ‘improve’ our healthcare system. However, each time a GP dispenses an abortion pill, a new and unique human life is ended. In 2019, the total number of lives lost through State funded abortions was 6,666, up from 2,879 the previous year.
Given that the figure of €2.9 million was just the cost of early abortions, how much did each of the later term abortions (10 weeks or more) cost? There has been no accountability to date regarding this figure. And how much money that was earmarked for maternity services was diverted to paying for abortions and in rolling out the provision of abortion in hospital settings? These are questions that remain to be answered.
But something we know for certain is that taxpayers’ money that should be used to bring new life into the world, is now being used to end lives in these very same hospitals.
None of the babies whose lives were ended through abortion should be looked upon as a mere statistic. Each one of them was a unique and irreplaceable human being with the same dignity and right to life as every other member of the human family.
What price a baby’s life?
The answer is inestimable.But to those who ushered in the new abortion law, we learned this week, the value placed on a baby’s life, appallingly, is a mere €450.
