Pro-lifers say 10,000 abortions not predicted by yes campaign before repeal

Pro-life organisation, Life Institute, has said that there should be no attempt to “rewrite history” in regard to predicted abortion numbers, after a leading advocate of legalised abortion, Dr Peter Boylan, said this week that 10,000 abortions had been predicted and planned in 2018.

The former master of the National Maternity Hospital, a key campaigner for Repeal during the abortion referendum, in a letter published in The Irish Times this week, said that Ireland’s abortion numbers are “far” from “being in any way astonishing” – and that they are “in line with, or slightly below the numbers that were expected after the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.”

It comes after new government statistics released at the beginning of July showed that 10,000 abortions took place in the State last year, an almost 20 per cent increase on 2022 numbers. The figure is a 250 per cent increase on the number of abortions performed prior to the vote to Repeal the eighth amendment in 2018 (when 2,879 abortions were recorded for women travelling from Ireland to Britain).

The climb in the abortion rate means that over 38,000 abortions have been performed between the legalisation of abortion after Ireland voted to repeal the eighth and the end of 2023.

In what the Irish Times selected as its ‘letter of the day’ last Saturday, Dr Boylan wrote  that “abortion numbers are in line with predictions,” penning:

“When I was appointed in October 2018 by then-minister for health Simon Harris to coordinate the implementation of abortion services after the vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment, I estimated that we should plan for 10,000 terminations annually before 12 weeks, with 80 per cent of those before nine weeks once the service was embedded.

“This was based on the figures in Scotland and Norway, two neighbouring countries with populations similar to Ireland in size and distribution, with numbers adjusted for the Irish population. The Department of Health and the HSE agreed with these figures and planned accordingly.”

Dr Boylan further wrote: “As abortion services in the Republic of Ireland have become established over the past five years, we see that the figure for 10,033 abortions in 2023 is exactly in line with what was predicted in 2018, or rather less considering the 8 per cent growth in population from 4,885,000 to 5,281,000 during those years. The 2023 figures represent a rate of 18.3 per 10,000 population.”

In response, The Life Institute said that prominent advocates for repealing the eighth amendment on national media in the lead up to the 2018 referendum had never given voters any indication that 10,000 abortions could be anticipated every year in Ireland.

“In fact, the opposite was promised: we had then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar promising abortion would be ‘rare”, and then Tánaiste Simon Coveney saying the regime would be restrictive,” spokeswoman Sabdra Parda said. “During the refeendum campaign campaign, we certainly don’t recall Dr Boylan giving any indication that we could expect anything remotely close to 10,000 abortions per annum. It is quite another thing to have made that claim once the vote was done and dusted.”

“The Save the Eighth Campaign, led by The Life Institute, warned at the time that Ireland would see a sharp rise in abortions. We pointed to one in five pregnancies ending in abortion in Britain, and we predicted that we could expect to see a situation like that in Ireland if people voted to repeal our pro-life laws. That is a situation which has come to pass, because in six short years, the abortion rate has spiralled to a point where one in six pregnancies are now ended in abortion. 

“Yet we recall how pro-life campaigners were castigated and condemned for making accurate predictions.”

Ms Parda pointed to a Hot Press interview given by Dr Boylan two weeks before Ireland went to the polls – during which he said that the assertion that one in five pregnancies in the UK ends in abortion was “wrong.”

“That’s wrong. That’s a lie,” he said. Speaking about some of those against repealing the eighth, he also said: “There are zealots, undoubtedly, who are abusive. And there are people who are propagating lies, left, right and centre about the Eighth Amendment and about what would happen.” 

Ms Parda also highlighted a Dáil Committee, which was held in October 2017, during which Dr Boylan was joined by Dr Meabh Ní Bhuinneáin, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Mayo University Hospital.

”During the sitting, Dr Ní Bhuinneáin made the claim that “abortion rates fall when legalised.” That is a direct quote which was made by Ní Bhuinneáin, who was sitting beside Dr Boylan. We recall all too well how Dr Peter Boylan offered no disagreement at the time,” she said.

“During that committee, Dr Boylan was asked by Senator Ronan Mullen about the rate of abortion in countries where abortion was not legalised. In response, Dr Boylan said that all of the international evidence was that “in countries where there is a liberal law or where they change from a restrictive law to a more liberal law, the rate of termination falls.”

“There should be no attempt to rewrite history because voters were never given any indication that the architects of this law and its most outspoken advocates believed that abortions would increase drastically. Instead, a narrative of ‘safe, legal and rare’ was championed at the expense of truth.”

“Back in 2018 when Dr Boylan was put in charge of the implementation of the abortion law, he may have believed that we should expect 10,000 abortions a year under the new law. However, that is not what then Health Minister Simon Harris or former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar or Tanaiste Michael Martin ever told voters to expect when they were being coaxed to support repeal. 

“None of the senior politicians advocating for Repeal, or any representative from the Department of Health or the HSE, or even any advocate of Repeal in the public arena, told voters they could expect to see a spiralling of the abortion rate. Instead, there were bizarre claims that liberalising the law on abortion could potentially result in a decrease in abortions, while then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar promised voters that abortion would be “rare” if voters backed dismantling the eighth amendment,” Parda added.

The Life Institute slammed what they said was a “lack of transparency and full disclosure” on the part of campaigners like Boylan and those in government.

“If 10,000 abortions a year was what they were truly expecting behind closed doors, there should have been no hesitation to share those estimations with the electorate. Where was the transparency?”

“Almost 40,000 abortions later, it is clear that there is no abortion figure that would make our government even slightly uncomfortable. If voters had known this six years ago, we believe things would have gone differently.”

Dr Boylan’s role in the Yes campaign in 2018 was the subject of some controversy. 17 obstetricians issued a public letter calling on the doctor to either step back from the campaign or from his role as Chair of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, as, they said, the “public face” of the institute, should refrain from supporting either side of the debate.

In addition, five former Chairs of the Institute also issued a public letter saying they were “horrified” by comments made by Boylan about maternal care in Ireland.

Responding in a statement, Dr Peter Boylan argued that there had been “no astonishing rise” in the abortion rate:

“As I detailed in my letter to the Irish Times last Monday, there has been no astonishing rise in the abortion rate in Ireland since the service was introduced. Following the decisive public vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment in 2018, legislation was passed in the Oireachtas to introduce the service,” Dr Boylan said.

“Based on international comparisons, it was anticipated that there would be approximately 10,000 terminations annually, once the service was established. Now that services have been rolled out across the country and the Covid pandemic, which distorted the figures for three years is over, the numbers for 2023 are exactly in line with what was planned for, or rather less perhaps when we take into account the rise in population in the past few years.”

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Maria Maynes

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This article first appeared on Gript and is published here with permission

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