The Irish bishops’ Council for Life has expressed dismay over the number of abortions which took place in Ireland in 2019, the first year that abortion was legal following the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.
A Department of Health report detailed 6,666 “Terminations of Pregnancy” during 2019, the first full year of legal abortion since the new law came into effect in January 2019.
The official statistics reveal that 24 abortions were carried out on medical grounds. Another 100 were carried out on the grounds of a “condition that was likely to lead to the death of the foetus”.
The vast majority of babies (6,542) who were aborted in Ireland last year are described in the report as having been “terminated” in “early pregnancy”.
A spokesperson for the Pro Life Campaign, Maeve O’Hanlon, noted that 375 abortions also took place in 2019 on women from Ireland who travelled to Britain and that this brought the figure for abortions in Ireland to 7,041 in total.
This compares with a figure of 2,879 abortion for the full year of 2018, when abortion was not legal in Ireland and women living in Ireland who had an abortion travelled to Britain and other countries in Europe.
“It’s the first time in 18 years that there has been an increase in the number of abortions and the first time in our history that thousands of innocent unborn babies have had their lives ended with the full backing of Irish law,” Maeve O’Hanlon of the Pro Life Campaign (PLC) said.
In their statement, the Council of Life, which is chaired by Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin, said that each of the unborn babies that was aborted was “a unique and precious human being. It was not their fault that their conception was inconvenient or untimely, or the result of sexual assault or that their parents lacked the support that would have helped them to embrace life”.
The Council also noted that the publication of the Government report was a timely reminder for Irish society of the concrete consequences of the decision made in May 2018, when the majority of Irish voters (66.4%) chose to remove constitutional protection from the unborn, and the majority of politicians voted to enact “this law against life”.
“The report, for those who will look beyond the statistics, represents a fresh call to conversion for individuals, for the political establishment and for society,” the Council said.
The Council of Life said the contrast between collective grief of the nation over the death of 1,735 people from Covid-19 and the “bland five page report” from the Department of Health detailing the number of unborn babies aborted was “staggering”.
While there would be no public grief over the deaths of the 6,666 unborn babies, the Council said that there would be “much unexpressed personal grief.” It invited all those affected by abortion - women and men - to avail of spiritual, sacramental and pastoral support to help them find healing and peace.
In their statement, the Pro Life Campaign noted that GPs are paid €450 by the State for every abortion they perform, “more than twice what they would typically receive for caring for a mother and her baby during pregnancy”.
Loading ...
