{"id":568087,"date":"2026-07-04T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T05:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/568087\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T05:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T05:00:16","slug":"almost-two-thirds-of-women-who-had-hospital-abortion-were-previously-pregnant-analysis-shows-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/568087\/","title":{"rendered":"Almost two-thirds of women who had hospital abortion were previously pregnant, analysis shows \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost two thirds of women who had a hospital-based abortion<\/a> over an eight-month period had a previous pregnancy, new analysis shows.<\/p>\n

The Health Service Executive<\/a> (HSE) on Friday published a report on the first six years of Termination of Pregnancy Services in Ireland. It included, for the first time, a profile of women who have availed of the service.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the provision of abortion has evolved and is now largely viewed as a routine and normal part of healthcare.<\/p>\n

The report outlines that between 2019 and 2024, a total of 46,861 terminations have occurred, with the highest being in 2024 when 10,852 occurred.<\/p>\n

It does not detail the number of abortions carried out in 2025.<\/p>\n

The publication also provided preliminary analysis from pilot sites monitoring and evaluating hospital-based terminations between May and December 2024.<\/p>\n

Before now, the only national data collected about abortion each year was the total number of terminations carried out under each section of the law, the month it was carried out and the county or country of residence of the woman accessing the health service.<\/p>\n

The analysis published on Friday looked at 305 women from 14 of the country\u2019s 19 maternity sites. It found the vast majority (81 per cent) had a medical abortion and the gestational age at the time of intervention was 10 to 12 weeks in 62.5 per cent of cases. Medical abortion is a non-surgical process that uses medication to end a pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Most of the women were aged less than 30 years old, with 35 per cent aged less than 25 years and 23 per cent aged 25-29 years.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, 17.7 per cent were aged 30 to 34, 15.6 per cent were 35 to 39 and 8.9 per cent were 40 or older.<\/p>\n

Almost two thirds (65 per cent) of the women had a previous pregnancy, and almost all of these women had given birth. <\/p>\n

Almost half of the women had experienced a previous miscarriage and 15 per cent had a previous termination.<\/p>\n

Contraception use was documented for almost three quarters of the women, and, of these women, 23 per cent had been using contraception before the termination of pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Though the data system only ran in a number of maternity units, there are plans within the HSE to make it national and to be expanded to include primary care.<\/p>\n

Following publication of the report, the HSE acknowledged some \u201ckey achievements\u201d, including the increase in maternity units providing the service from 10 in 2019 to all 19 in 2025.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, there was an increase in contract holders in primary care providing early medical abortions from 310 contract holders in 2019 to 480 contract holders in 2025.<\/p>\n

Dr Aoife Mullally, clinical lead for termination of pregnancy services in the HSE National Women and Infants Health Programme, said termination is one of the most common medical procedures experienced by women worldwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cSafe, high-quality termination of pregnancy care is therefore an essential element of the healthcare services the HSE provides,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a global climate where reproductive rights are increasingly under pressure, safeguarding and sustaining these important services must remain a priority to ensure that people can continue to access the care that they need and are legally entitled to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Cliona Murphy, clinical director of the National Women and Infants Health Programme, said the focus must now turn to \u201cplanning the next phase of termination of pregnancy services\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe service will continue to evolve in response to changes within the health system and the needs of the population, with a sustained emphasis on evidence-based, equitable and woman-centred care,\u201d she said.<\/b><\/p>\n

Under the current laws, women can have an abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. However, there is also a mandatory three-day waiting period between the date a doctor certifies the pregnancy and the date of the actual termination.<\/p>\n

A Sinn F\u00e9in Bill to remove the mandatory three-day waiting period passed through the second stage of the D\u00e1il last month. If it passes through all stages of the Oireachtas, the wait could be scrapped by the end of this year.<\/p>\n

The Pro Life Campaign said the report\u2019s claim that abortion is now acknowledged as a \u201croutine\u201d part of healthcare provision \u201cis a political statement\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cAny procedure that ends the life of another human being is the furthest thing imaginable from healthcare, regardless of the language used to justify it,\u201d spokeswoman Eil\u00eds Mulroy said. \u201cCalling abortion \u2018healthcare\u2019 is deeply misleading and does a grave disservice to women and their unborn babies, and the many doctors and midwives who do their best to protect both lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost two thirds of women who had a hospital-based abortion over an eight-month period had a previous pregnancy,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[28810,9,10,18,13,14,6,2450,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-568087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-abortion","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-health-service-executive-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116859950102787701","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}