Update as at 12.07.2025: The annual report from the DoH showed that 10,892 abortions had taken place in 2024, with the previous estimate increased by the number of abortions that took place in settings other than GPs surgeries.
A leading pro-life group has said that the revelation that more than 50,000 abortions had taken place in Ireland by the end of February was both “horrifying” and a “direct result of the relentless push to focus on abortion as a first solution”, adding that women and babies were being “utterly failed” by the state.
The Life Institute was reacting to information released to Carol Nolan TD by the HSE which showed that at least 10,441 abortions had been carried out in 2024 – while an additional 1,742 abortions took place in January and February of 2025.
Deputy Nolan said that the new figures confirmed that the numbers of abortions that had taken place had exceeded 50,000, and that successive governments had broken promises made in the 2018 referendum that abortion would be “rare”.
2019: 6,666
2020: 6,577
2021: 6,700
2022: 8,156
2023: 10,033
2024: 10,441
Jan/Feb 2025: 1,742
TOTAL: 50,315
Furthermore, she added the final total for the number of abortions from January 2024 to February 2025 would increase further when the abortions that had taken place in settings other than GP surgeries were accounted for.
Some 200 abortions take place in Ireland each year under sections 9,10 and 11 of the abortion act which are separate categories to the 12-week on demand terminations.
In the parliamentary question submitted to the Minister for Health, Deputy Nolan had asked for information around payments to GPs who were reimbursed for ‘first and second consultations for terminations of pregnancy’ for 2024 and the first three months of the 2025. In their response, the HSE confirmed 12,641 women had an initial consultation with a GP last year, at a cost of €1.9m.
Of that total, the 10,441 returned for a termination and aftercare, which cost a further €3.1m.
Those figures relate to abortions in a non-hospital setting but do not include abortions carried out between nine and twelve weeks , which are typically carried out in hospitals. Abortion on demand is legal in Ireland up to 12 weeks, while late-term abortions are legal if the baby has a life-limiting condition.
Life Institute’s Sandra Parda said that the figures showed that the “profoundly disturbing” trend of a “spiralling abortion rate” was continuing year on year. “Less than 3,000 women travelled to Britain for an abortion in 2018, with perhaps another 1,000 taking abortion pills, so seeing more than 10,000 abortions in one year shows the rate has more than doubled, yet all we hear from the government and the taxpayer-funded pro-abortion NGOs is talk of trying to make abortion even more accessible,” she said.
“We are literally aborting our future, yet most of our TDs are too small-minded and too petty to take any action that might tackle our soaring abortion rate,” she added. “Like the rest of the world we are facing a collapse in births, and aborting 10,000 babies a year is making that stark reality even worse, yet our ideology-addled TDs in government and in large part of the Opposition are just digging their heads into the sand and wondering if we can make it even easier to get abortions – which will just hike the already appalling rate up further again.”
She said that the natural outcome of the “current fixation on abortion as the primary solution to women in crisis” would “lead to a situation where pro-life families would become in the majority again sooner than anyone might have envisaged in 2018,” but that “women and unborn babies are paying for the social crisis we are seeing reflected in these figures with their lives and their wellbeing.”
“The government is failing women and failing babies and they need to be held accountable,” she added.
Carol Nolan said that successive governments had failed to acknowledge the soaring abortion rate – and added that: ‘Women who regret abortion are ignored. Harms caused are minimised and a society is gaslighted if it dares to question the trajectory of a policy that cheerleads abortion as empowerment.”
‘This has created a silent ruthlessness that is actively harming women while ending the lives of their children,” she said.
“The silence of all those who offered guarantees to voters in 2018 is deafening. It is an abdication of political accountability and engagement that is quite frankly monstrous. Where is the cheering crowd of supporters and their political allies who ushered in this era of mass death? The cowardice is contemptible,” she added
The Department of Health said that their MyOptions service supported individuals “in making an informed decision, and offered “non-directive listening support, counselling and information for people experiencing an unplanned pregnancy.”