Sir, – Dr Peter Boylan (Letters, July 15th) makes numerous assumptions but provides very little evidence when attempting to explain the sharp increase in abortions that has taken place in Ireland since the law changed in 2019.
The latest figures published in June show that 10,033 abortions happened in Ireland in 2023. This compares with the official figure of 3,019 women from the Republic accessing abortion in England and Wales in 2017, the year before the referendum. In 2018, that figure was 2,879.
Dr Boylan contends that there has been no significant change in recent years in the number of Irish abortions despite what the official figures show. He says the “practice was well-identified over many years” concerning Irish women not providing correct addresses when accessing abortion abroad. He also refers to the availability of illegal abortion pills prior to repeal which were not included in the official figures. It should be noted that repeal-supporting groups conducted their own research prior to the referendum on this very issue. Even if one were to accept at face value the figures they came up with and add them to the official figures for Irish abortions prior to repeal, it is still drastically less than the number of abortions that occurred in Ireland in, say, 2023.
Back in 2018 when Dr Boylan was coordinating the implementation of the new abortion regime on behalf of the government, he may well have believed that we should expect 10,000 abortions to occur annually under the new law. It is not, however, what senior politicians were telling voters when coaxing them to back repeal. The then-taoiseach Leo Varadkar promised voters that abortion in Ireland would be “rare” if they voted in favour of dismantling the Eighth Amendment. The then-leader of the opposition and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin made the bizarre and remarkable claim that liberalising the law on abortion could potentially result in a decrease in the number of abortions taking place.
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It is a fact that wherever abortion is legalised, the number of abortions occurring increases. It is the inevitable outcome when something is normalised and presented as a social good.
The politicians who campaigned so vociferously for abortion on demand now run a mile when it comes to debating what they’ve helped create. It is also extremely sad that the focus of those who campaigned for abortion is on opening the door to abortion even more, rather than looking for ways to reduce Ireland’s spiralling abortion rate. – Yours, etc
EILÍS MULROY,
Pro Life Campaign,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – Dr Peter Boylan claims that abortion numbers are in line with predictions. However, how many campaigners, including politicians, on the pro-choice side predicted in 2018 that we would see 10,000 abortions annually and climbing?
In January 2018, when announcing that the Cabinet had agreed to hold a referendum to repeal the Eight Amendment, Leo Varadkar, who was the then-taoiseach, stated: “If the amendment is approved in a referendum, abortion in Ireland will become safe, legal, and rare, in the situations provided for by the Oireachtas.”
A few days before the referendum, then-minister for health Simon Harris announced plans for free access to contraception as a means to keep the number of unwanted pregnancies low. He said, “If our underlying principle is that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, then we must do all we can to reduce the number of crisis pregnancies and to support women in every way.”
Now, five years after the implementation of the abortion law, it is clear that the Government’s policies to make abortion rare have been completely ineffective.
Before the referendum, Dr Peter Boylan told the Oireachtas that “the rate of termination comes down once more liberalised legislation is introduced”.
While numbers before 2018 can only be estimated, official figures from the Department of Health show that with liberalisation, the abortion rate in Ireland has gone in the opposite direction predicted by Dr Boylan. Scotland, a country Dr Boylan mentioned for comparison in his letter, should not be taken as a model if we aim to make abortion rare as their rates are currently at their highest historical level.
Regardless of whether you believe abortion should be permitted or not, 10,000 terminations per annum will surely strike the average person as high, and almost certainly not in line with what they expected when the country voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment in 2018. – Yours, etc,
Dr ANGELO BOTTONE,
Research officer,
The Iona Institute,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – Your letter writers (July 16th) worry about Ireland’s abortion figures, telling us we can all agree that 10,033 during 2023 is too many, as if there were some magic “correct” number of abortions with which we could all be happy. The truth is that as long as women still have to leave this country to obtain reproductive healthcare overseas, there are too few abortions taking place in Ireland, not too many. It’s time to implement the measures recommended by the Brady review and make our abortion system more workable for those who need it. – Yours, etc,
BERNIE LINNANE,
Dromahair,
Co Leitrim.