The report has been widely criticized by pro-life advocates as “based on selective evidence and poor-quality research,” according to Mulroy.
Ireland’s March for Life on May 1 brought out thousands of people who marched in Dublin from St. Stephen’s Green to the front of Leinster House protesting “the extreme proposals” contained in the review report.
The report recommends decriminalizing abortion entirely, which would effectively allow for abortion on request up to birth.
Elective abortions are allowed in Ireland up to 12 weeks of pregnancy and later in cases of fatal fetal abnormality or where the woman’s life or health are deemed to be at risk.
“It has been incredibly irresponsible for the three-year review, which failed to present an accurate estimation of the abortion rate, to focus so heavily on dramatically expanding the abortion legislation,” Mulroy told CNA.
“The review should have been an opportunity to objectively assess the impact and operation of the abortion law.”
Instead, she said, the report is “effectively like a blueprint for more abortion as a whole document and has failed to do anything to address the massive abortion rates or to do anything to support women.”
The report also recommends that the eight remaining maternity hospitals in Ireland that do not perform abortions be forced to do so, raising concerns about conscience protections for doctors and nurses.
“Ireland has transformed from a situation where any potential change to Ireland’s abortion laws would require a referendum of the whole people, to a new situation where extreme proposals can be made by unelected appointees without any serious media scrutiny or parliamentary accountability,” Mulroy said.
A closer look at the numbers
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Pro-life advocates have also criticized the review report’s claim that there were approximately 17,820 abortions in the Republic of Ireland between January 2019 and December 2022.
“This figure is grossly inaccurate, and underrates the real number by 40%,” according to the Pro-Life Campaign.
Mulroy explained that the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 required that doctors fill in a notification form to the Minister for Health after they’ve performed an abortion, which is compiled and released in an annual report.
However, for the abortion rate in 2021, the number of notifications submitted by abortionists to the government was far out of step with the number of claims made for reimbursement for abortions performed. While 4,577 notifications were received, abortionists submitted reimbursement claims for 6,683 abortions performed in 2021.
“The Department of Health acknowledged this in a supplementary note on the DOH website when releasing the annual report for 2021 in the summer of 2022. Obviously, doctors had been performing abortions, claiming money, but not filling in the notification forms,” Mulroy said.
The Pro-Life Campaign came to a total of 28,802 abortions performed in the Republic of Ireland from 2019 to 2022 by looking at the numbers of notifications and claims over the years since the referendum went into effect.
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