Ireland's abortion rates rise 62% over 5 years; Catholic advocates call it 'a tragedy'

(OSV News) -- Abortions in Ireland spiked in the space of just five years, government figures have revealed.

Statistics released by the Department of Health in Ireland showed that 10,852 abortions were performed in Ireland in 2024 -- representing a 62.8% increase over the 6,666 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% 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 emailed to OSV News that 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 recognized, Irish healthcare professionals are penalized 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 legitimize 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."

David Quinn, the founder and chief executive of the Iona Institute, which promotes Christianity in Ireland, said assurances given to Irish voters by former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar that legal abortion would be rare have turned out to be false.

"This is not the case at all," he said in a July 18 statement sent by email to OSV News.

"What does he think now, and what does the present government think?" he continued. "They have been completely silent about it."

"But I doubt if they will ever admit that the number is unacceptably high, even from a pro-choice point of view," Quinn said. "The whole thing is a tragedy."

Quinn added that the figures proved that the now-repealed Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution, which until the referendum protected the lives of unborn children, "saved many, many lives."

Enacted in 1983, the amendment granted the unborn a right to life equal to that of the mother, effectively creating a near-total ban on abortion.

Catherine Robinson of the Right to Life charity said in a July 15 statement that the increase in abortions in Ireland has been dramatic.

"Less than a decade ago, unborn babies' lives were protected by law in Ireland," she said in the statement posted on the Right to Life website.

"Now, according to the latest data," lives "are being ended at a rate of over 10,000 per year."
The referendum paved the way for the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act which allowed Irish women access to abortion.

In 2018, the year before the law came into effect, a total of 2,879 Irish women traveled to the U.K. to have abortions.

A further 32 abortions were reported to have taken place in Ireland under the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, taking the total number of abortions for Irish residents in 2018 to 2,911.

Of the abortions performed in 2024, a total of 10,711 (98.7%) were not carried out to protect the health or life of the mother or because of any condition likely to lead to the death of the unborn baby.

The largest number of abortions occurred in January 2024 (1,056) and the fewest were performed in August 2024 (849).

There were a total of 48,984 abortions in Ireland from the start of 2019 to the end of 2024, according to data from the Department of Health.

The figures were released days after U.K. government statistics revealed that nearly 1 in 3 conceptions in England and Wales now ends in abortion.