A Freedom of Information request to the Department of Health by the pro-life advocacy group Both Lives Matter has revealed that annual abortion rates in Northern Ireland have almost doubled since Westminster ordered the decriminalisation of abortion.
According to Dawn McAvoy of Both Lives Matter, nearly 6,000 abortions have taken place annually in Northern Ireland since the end of March 2020.
“Before Westminster’s intervention around 2,000 lives were being saved from abortion every year,” the group said.
“Our research, which was scrutinised and upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority, showed that our previous law saved the lives of over 100,000 people born between 1967 and 2017. Now this carefully balanced law has been reversed.”
Both Lives Matter also said that according to information released by the Northern Trust, one of the five health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland, 87.8 per cent of healthcare staff who could potentially be involved in abortion provision have signalled that they would object on grounds of conscience.
Right to Life UK marked the anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act on 27 October by publishing statistics which showed that 10,256,050 pregnancies had been terminated in England and Wales since it received royal assent.
The charity said that 123,219 abortions took place in England and Wales in the first six months of 2022, almost 18,000 more than in the same period of the previous year.
“Every one of these abortions represents a collective failure of our society to protect the lives of babies in the womb and a failure to offer full support to women with unplanned pregnancies,” said Right to Life’s spokesperson Catherine Robinson.
In the Republic of Ireland, the Pro Life Campaign’s chief executive Eilís Mulroy has said that their research has revealed that the Irish government spent €46m of taxpayers’ money on abortion provision in the past four and a half years and “not a single cent on promoting alternatives to abortion”.
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