12 babies born alive after abortion in 2022

TDs and campaign groups have reacted to the revelation that 12 babies were born alive following abortion and died afterwards in the year 2022 alone, saying the data was “deeply disturbing”, and indicated “a collapse in our moral and ethical sensitivity to the humanity of the unborn child”.

In response to a parliamentary question submitted by Cork TD, Ken O’Flynn, the HSE acknowledged that 12 babies were born alive following abortion and died afterwards in 2022 alone. The HSE data said that of those babies, one preborn child was less than 22 weeks gestation; nine babies were between 22 and 27 weeks, and two were between 28 and 31 weeks gestation.

The HSE’s reply, quoting reports on perinatal deaths from the National Perinatal Epidemiology Centre (NPEC), also showed that, in 2020, 10 babies who survived after abortion before then dying.

Leading pro-life group, Life Institute, said that the data for 2022 suggested that “perhaps more than 60 cases of babies surviving late-term abortion could have occurred in the period since abortion was legalised in Ireland”.

Spokeswoman Sandra Parda said the situation was “barbaric” and that it was “deeply disturbing and horrific to think that preborn babies, some more than 7 months gestation, were being born alive after abortion, with no public debate on what such a dreadful situation meant for either mother or baby”.

She said that there was a “culture of denial, in the media and political establishment in regard to babies being born alive after abortion, although cases had been documented in published research and now by the HSE”, adding that the information which “should be the subject of significant public discussion leading to change”.

Feticide is practised as a late-term abortion procedure in Irish hospitals, where the preborn child receives a lethal injection into the heart causing cardiac arrest.

A 2020 peer-reviewed paper from UCC researchers examining the practice of late-term abortion and feticide in Irish maternity hospitals showed that those carrying out the procedure saw it as ‘brutal’, ‘awful’ and ‘emotionally difficult’ – referring to it as ‘stabbing the baby in the heart’.

“I remember getting sick out in the corridors afterwards because I thought it (feticide) was such an awful procedure and so dreadful,” one doctor was quoted as saying.

In the UCC study, the authors note that the specialists carrying out abortion were frustrated by conflict with neonatologists and were “unclear” as to who will look after those babies’ if a baby was “born alive following an abortion by induction of labour and without feticide”.

This would leave the doctor who performed an unsuccessful late-term abortion “begging people to help” them provide palliative care if the baby survived, the study recorded.

Referring to the data from the HSE in response to his parliamentary question on the issue, Independent Ireland TD, Ken O’Flynn, said:

“It is hard to fathom that babies are being born alive after abortions in Ireland and sadly you have to go round in circles just to get answers as to how the babies are treated once they come into this world. There needs to be a lot more openness surrounding the medical care given to or withheld from the babies in these appalling situations. The answer to my parliamentary question should serve as the beginning, not the end, of the flow of information.”

Carol Nolan TD, who has previously called for pain relief measures for babies in late-term abortion said that “the urgency around having a renewed national conversation on our abortion regime and the tragic outcomes it is facilitating has never been more obvious”.

“The post 8th amendment world we now live in is generating a collapse in our moral and ethical sensitivity to the humanity of the unborn child. We must continue to work with renewed passion toward a reversal of that collapse and toward a reawakened appreciation of the beauty and fragility of the child in the womb.”

The Pro Life Campaign said “it is truly shocking to learn that so many babies have been born alive after abortion in Ireland and that there isn’t clarity about what so-called “comfort care” means and what standard of medical care is being provided to these babies. Indeed, in some cases doctors subject unborn babies to feticide, a procedure involving a lethal injection in the baby’s heart, to make sure a baby near full-term is not born alive.”

“Back in 2018 soon after the abortion referendum, the then Minister for Health Simon Harris accused TDs in the Dáil of resorting to “shock tactics” for raising concerns about babies being born alive after abortion and the care they might receive. We now know that the concerns raised are grounded in harsh reality and should not have been dismissed,” spokeswoman Éilís Mulroy said.

The Life Institute said that “the media and political establishment should no longer be permitted to cover-up the reality of late-term abortion – or the spiralling abortion rate which saw almost 11,000 babies killed before birth in 2024. The Minister for Health should be held to account for this travesty and this appalling inhumanity”.

Protest at offices of J Lawless TD

---

This article was first published in Gript by Máirín de Barra 

---