Martin 'concerned' as Irish abortions in Britain rise

The Minister for Health this evening said he was "concerned" at figures showing the number of women having abortions in England and giving Irish addresses rose to a record high last year.

According to provisional figures released this morning by the Office for National Statistics in England, 6,388 women giving addresses in the State had abortions in Britain last year.

Mr Martin: "The increase in the number of women having abortions is a cause for concern" .

This is a 2.8 per cent increase on the 1999 figure of 6,214 abortions. The 1998 figure was 5,891.

The report also shows 1,528 women gave addresses in Northern Ireland when having abortions in Britain last year.

Expressing his concern at the rising figures, Mr Micheál Martin told ireland.comthe Cabinet Committee was currently considering the 5th Progress Report of the All-Party Committee on the Constitution, dealing with the issue of abortion.

"The All-Party Committee proposed the establishment of an independent agency to draw up a national strategy to combat crisis pregnancy and this is being examined at present," the minister said.

Mr Martin said the Government was committed "in principle" to an approach along the lines set out in the Report. He added that considerable preparatory work needed to be undertaken before a plan such as that proposed can be put in place.

"Work is underway in my Department on appropriate arrangements for the establishment of an agency such as that proposed by the All-Party Committee. It will be the task of this agency, when established to prepare a national plan to combat crisis pregnancy and to oversee its implementation," he said.

The Pro-Life Campaign (PLC) blamed the latest increase on the 1995 Information Act and said the Government’s stated objective of reducing the number of abortions had failed.

Mr John Smyth, a PLC spokesman, said the Act provided de factoabortions and the Government should now review it.

"The figures are evidence that abortions have dramatically increased as a result if the 1995 Act."

Mr Smyth added that by making it legal for counsellors to provide the address of clinics in England under the 1995 Act there was a concern that "positive options were not being fully explored".

"We need to make women more aware of the positive alternatives, economically, socially, and from a welfare point of view", he said. He added that the whole area was chronically underfunded.

He called on the cabinet sub-committee on abortion to look at the 1995 Act and its consequences. "When the sub-committee comes to make recommendations I hope it includes a package of measures to reduce abortions," he said.

He urged the Government to look at evidence from the US-based Caring Foundation, which showed that if conditions pressurising women to having an abortion are removed, abortion rates can be slowed down and even reversed.

Mr Gay Mitchell, Fine Gael spokesman on health, told ireland.comhe was "seeking an independent audit of the number of women having abortions outside the country. If we are to deal with this we must have the precise figures".

To tackle the issue Mr Mitchell called for £50 million to be invested in a independent agency to support women with crisis pregnancies.

The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) responded to the 2000 figures by saying it was a relatively modest increase compared with recent years.

"We are too obsessed with hard numbers in the this country. Figures tell you less than statistics and the statistical increase is quite low," said Mr Tony O'Brien, chief executive of the IFPA.

He described the figures as "more representative" of the number of abortions by Irish women and said they reflected an increasing openness since the 1995 Information Act. He added that the figures revealed a leveling off.

He said there was "still a number of Irish women who, for whatever reason, chose not to give their address".

He also said the Information Act had done a great service to individual women and the country’s knowledge of the reality of Irish abortion.

Future increases or a stabilisation of the number of abortions would depend the number of women within the fertile age range and this was affected by a number of factors like outward migration and immigration, he continued.

But Pro-Life spokesman Mr Smyth rejected the IFPA suggestion that the new figures were "more representative".

"I see no basis for what the Irish Family Planning Association say. Counselling always existed but the increases followed the 1995 Act."

The overall abortion figure for England and Wales was 185,000 last year, up on the 1999 figure of 183,200 but still below the 1998 total of 187,400, the highest on record.

A spokesman for the Office for National Statistics said while all the figures were provisional, only a slight variation in the Irish figures could be expected in the final report.

An average of 122 women per week gave an Irish address when having an abortion in England in 2000, about 24 women per day.