Spain has once again exceeded 100,000 abortions for the second consecutive year. According to the latest data released by the government, in 2024 a total of 106,172 women voluntarily had abortions, 2.9% more than in 2023.
Only 5% of cases involved serious risk to the woman’s health or life, or serious foetal abnormalities. Abortions performed at the woman’s request without these conditions represented a record number, according to the Ministry of Health’s records, accounting for 94.6% of cases.
The 20-24 age group had the highest number of women who had abortions (19.6%), followed by the 24-28 age group (18%). A total of 11,710 abortions were performed on women aged 19 or younger (9.1%).
Abortions in Spain, according to official statistics. / Graph: Health Ministry of Spain
In 2024, abortions in public health centres increased, reaching 21.25%, almost double the figure of ten years ago. The vast majority of abortions are ‘out-of-hospital’, reaching 70.9% in the case of private centres.
According to the newspaper El País, between 2019 and 2024, private health centres have received at least €150 million from the public budgets of the autonomous communities to perform abortions not covered by the public health system.
The number of Spanish women who have had abortions has fallen slightly (from 67% to 64% in three years), a similar trend among African women and women from the rest of Europe. It is among women from South America, Central America and the Caribbean that there has been a clear increase in abortions performed in Spain: from 17% of the total in 2015 to 22% in 2024.
Catalonia, Madrid and the Balearic Islands remain the three autonomous communities with the highest number of abortions per 1,000 women.
In recent days, Spain has seen a reignited debate on abortion. Christian doctors are calling for the medium- and long-term effects of abortion on women not to be hidden.
The most recent low in the number of abortions in Spain occurred in 2020 (88,269 abortions), coinciding with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced severe restrictions on movement, including in health centres.
The passing of the abortion law of 2010 led to a record number of abortions in 2011, with a total of 118,611 abortions that year.
Published in: Evangelical Focus – europe
– Spain records 106,172 abortions, the highest figure in more than a decade