Northern Ireland reports record number of abortions

The number of abortions in Northern Ireland has reached its highest levels since the law was liberalised in 2020.

Statistics from the Department of Health reveal that there were 2,899 abortions between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025. While this is only a 3.7 per cent rise from the previous year, it is 84 per cent higher than in 2021.

Since Westminster’s liberal abortion regime was introduced in 2020, 11,192 abortions have been carried out in the Province.

‘Dishonest’

The vast majority of the abortions (88.9 per cent) involved abortion pills, where a woman under 10 weeks’ gestation can take misoprostol at home without medical supervision.

TUV MLA Timothy Gaston accused the media of being “deeply dishonest” for claiming that the new abortion regime was only needed for “hard cases”, as “8,000 abortions in four years since decriminalisation did not happen because of those exceptional situations”.

He warned that it is “anything but compassionate to ignore the social pressures — economic, familial, and cultural — that push women toward ending a pregnancy instead of receiving real support”.

Complications

Earlier this year, NHS England data revealed that over 54,000 women have been hospitalised following at-home abortion complications since 2020.

Research organisation Percuity reported that, according to NHS data, 1-in-17 women who had an abortion at home required hospital care for complications including incomplete abortions, infections, and excessive haemorrhaging.

The DIY scheme, where women take both mifepristone and misoprostol at home, now accounts for the majority of abortions since it was introduced, initially as a temporary measure, during the coronavirus pandemic.