By Jim Stack
Irish newspapers have not paid much attention to what is happening under the abortion regime put in place under the Termination of Pregnancy Act of 2018. The Irish Independent, for example, reported perfunctorily as follows on the Irish 2023 abortion data (the latest available, published by the Department of Health 28th June 2024): “The highest number were in Dublin at 3,645 terminations followed by Cork at 873. The lowest was in Leitrim at 47 and Monaghan at 74”.
Comparing abortion numbers in different counties, in this way, is at best uninformative and at worst misleading, because the population of each county is not being taken into account. The Department of Health is perhaps more at fault here than the newspapers; all the newspapers do is regurgitate what the Department supplies to them.
It will be seen below, using abortion ratios, that ten other counties actually have lower abortion rates than Leitrim, and also that ten other counties have higher abortion rates than Cork. The counties with the lowest abortion rates in 2023 were Monaghan, Meath and Cavan, and the counties with the highest abortion rates were Dublin, Louth and Waterford. That is all a far cry from what was reported by the Irish Independent.
The abortion ratio is the number of abortions per 1000 live births. Because the abortion ratio relates abortions to births, which are in turn related to population size in each county, it gives a much clearer picture of what has been happening in each county than is conveyed by the raw abortion numbers. The abortion ratio will be used extensively in this report.
Abortion ratios for each county 2023
The first bar chart below shows the abortion ratios for each county, sorted from lowest to highest. The birth data for 2023, used to calculate the ratios, are available on the Central Statistics Office website. The abortion numbers are straight from the Department of Health official report, published 28th June 2024.
The chart makes for depressing reading. Every single county in Ireland now has an abortion ratio of at least 100: at least 100 abortions for every 1000 births, or 1 abortion for every 10 births. The same analysis of the 2019 data has just 3 counties (Dublin, Louth and Waterford) with abortion ratios in excess of 100. Now all 26 counties have. That is an appalling development.
One other comment on this chart: Regional variation, in abortion rates within countries, is not in itself unusual. Densely populated urban areas, for example, usually have higher abortion rates than rural areas. What is remarkable about the Irish data (and this was evident as early as 2019) is that counties in the same region, not varying greatly in population density, can have markedly different abortion rates.
Why, for example, is the abortion ratio for Waterford so much higher than surrounding counties Wexford, Kilkenny, Carlow, Tipperary and Cork?
It is also worth asking why the counties which have cities do not have uniformly high abortion ratios. Counties Dublin, Waterford and Limerick have much higher abortion ratios than counties Cork and Galway.
The data prompt us to ask these questions, but we do not have other data to help us find answers. Information on women seeking abortions, that is routinely gathered in other countries – on ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, marital status, previous abortions etc -is not collected by the Irish Department of Health.
But there is one explanation which could easily be checked by the Department of Health (but almost certainly will not be). Overall, about 82% of women in Ireland, who contact a GP for an initial abortion consultation, actually proceed to an abortion, but there is some evidence that this figure may be a lot higher for individual abortion providers. For the Dublin-based Irish Family Planning Association, for example, in 2021 the reported figure was over 95% (Kitty Holland, Irish Times, 19.4.23). One or two large abortion providers in some counties, with higher-than-average percentages of completed abortions, might account for the inter-county variation.
Comparing abortion ratios in 2019 and 2023
The second bar chart below compares abortion rates in 2019 and 2023, by county. The 2019 data were chosen for comparison because the official data for 2020-2022 were affected by Covid restrictions, or by the cyber-attack on the HSE.
It is evident from this chart that abortion ratios grew substantially in every county between 2019 and 2023, but at very different growth rates. The lowest increase was 31% in Meath, followed by 40% in Carlow. In contrast, seven counties (Clare, Donegal, Kerry, Leitrim, Monaghan, Offaly and Roscommon) more than doubled their abortion ratio in 2023 compared with 2019. As is evident from the chart, many of the counties with relatively low abortion ratios in 2019 showed very large increases in 2023.
Utterly depressing evidence, in short, of how abortion gradually becomes normalised in communities.
Conclusion
No corner of our country is a safe place for the unborn child. These babies are at increased risk of termination in every county of Ireland.
It is beyond belief, in the face of these data, that the Irish political establishment and mainstream media either remain silent about abortion, or advocate for its further liberalisation.
