At this stage, everyone admits that the removal of the right of unborn babies to be born without the threat of murder was done so on dishonest grounds in 2018, yet it is still worth repeating.
Some of the lies that were told were that the legislation would only be necessary for cases where the woman’s life was in danger, that the abortion rate would not increase and that babies would not be born alive and left to die (some have speculated that this is in order to harvest their organs for sale to pharmaceutical companies).
Last year, many were shocked that the number had skyrocketed to 6,666. The number this year is at 6,577, which as Angelo Bottone has pointed out, that when the numbers who aborted babies on British soil are also included, this amounts to an increase in the rate of abortions, due to the fall in the number of births. In total, there were 6,771 abortions of Irish babies in Ireland and in the UK. This went up from 117 per 1,000 live births in 2019 to 123.3 in 2020.
This table shows that a total of 25, or 0.38% of abortions were Risk to life or Health or Risk or Life to Health in an Emergency.
A total of 97, or 1.47% of abortions were in cases for ‘Condition likely to lead to death of foetus’.
The following table shows how many abortions occurred in each month, with abortion doctors still performing destructions on fetuses even during lockdown.
Lastly, the data included stated each county by numbers of abortion. Leitrim had the lowest at 28. Louth, despite having a population of only 128,884, had 220 abortions. The Irish abortion stats are completely inadequate compared to their British counterparts, yet this one is telling in other ways for comparison. In the UK, 81% of abortions last year were to women who had a marital status as ‘single’. Louth’s exceptionally high abortion rate coincides with the fact that it has the highest rate of births outside of marriage/civil partnerships.
The UK stats also offer such information as the number of repeat abortions, the number of abortions that were paid for by taxpayers (my taxes my choice?) and nationality and ethnicity rather than simply ‘residency’. Although these haven’t made much difference in the general scheme of things, since the abortion rate there is increasing each year, it nonetheless offers a more clear picture of what is happening.
This weekend will see the Rally for Life taking place across Ireland. It is important to demonstrate publicly against these laws but there is no doubt that their implementation has been a massive success for the government during these past 3 years, with very little effective resistance of note. Those who have kept on the fight deserve much credit, especially those who have helped women in crisis pregnancies with financial, spiritual and material assistance. There are those who have lobbed criticism from the sidelines while doing nothing themselves, particularly towards Catholic prolife activists, they need to be simply ignored.
The first step nonetheless will be to try to get more visible political representation. Abortion is rarely raised as a topic in the Dail, mostly when it is, it is by pro abortion TDs. Prolife TDs need to be reminded of why we vote for them, lest they take the vote for granted. Prolife issues should be raised at least once a week in the Dail or Seanad. Ireland’s birth rate is completely freefalling, with a 25% decline in a decade thanks to the austerity imposed by Fine Gael, Labour , Green Party and Fianna Fail. Even abolishing USC for families should be the kind of prolife issue that politicians are in pursuit of.
Above all, pray for mothers, the unborn and for our country.
Seosamh O’Caoimh
Ireland’s abortion rate increased last year | The Iona Institute