COMMENTS ABOUT WOMEN from Ireland seeking abortions in the UK made by Holly Cairns in the Dáil have come under scrutiny by anti-abortion campaigners, who described them as “wholly inaccurate”.

In a press release sent to The Journal, the Pro-Life Campaign said Cairns, the leader of the Social Democrats party, “misled the Dáil this week when she suggested that 240 Irish women travel to England each year for abortions because their babies were diagnosed with life-limiting conditions”.

In a post on X, the group repeated a similar claim while tagging The Journal’s FactCheck unit, saying: “Facts matter in public debate. Will @TJ_FactCheck fact-check the figures presented by Holly Cairns and clarify the data for the Members of the Oireachtas and the public?”

Before we can factcheck what Cairns said, it is important to establish what exactly she did say.

Leaders’ Questions

Speaking in the Dáil on 4 March, Cairns told the story of a woman who was unable to terminate her pregnancy in Ireland after it was discovered that the foetal brain had not developed. While the condition is fatal, doctors said they could not be certain that the baby would die within 28 days of birth, which Irish legislation would require for a legal termination in this country.

Cairns outlined the suffering and health risks caused by that woman needing to go to the UK for treatment, as well as difficulties in bringing home the remains of the foetus and a lack of follow-up care. The official transcript describes Cairns’ finishing remarks as such:

Cairns makes two claims here:

• Every year, 240 Irish women travel to the UK to access abortion care, and
• Hundreds of women travel for abortions as a result of the government ignoring an expert report, published in April 2023, recommending clarity on the provision of care in cases of foetal abnormality and the end to criminalisation of doctors.

Cairns did not say that 240 Irish women travel to England each year for abortions because their babies were diagnosed with life-limiting conditions. She never used the term “life-limiting” at all, though she did discuss diagnosis of foetal abnormality as part of the example and the recommendations made to the government in 2023. 

The Social Democrats responded to inquiries from The Journal clarifying that Cairns had made no other remarks on abortion that day which the Pro-Life Campaign could be referring to.

The Pro-Life Campaign has not responded to The Journal’s inquiries seeking clarification on its press release and X posts.

So given that Cairns did make two comments about abortion in the UK, were those claims accurate?

240 women a year

In the Dáil, Cairns claimed: “Every year, 240 women have to travel to the UK to access abortion care”.

While it is possible to take issue with the choice of words (“have to”), the figure Cairns gives here is correct.

An analysis by The Journal Investigates last year showed that, between 2019 and 2022, an average of 240 women travelled every year from Ireland to the UK.

Since then, figures for abortions in England and Wales for 2023 have also since been released, showing that 235 women from the Republic of Ireland received treatment that year, while another five Irish women (it was unclear if they were from the Irish Republic or Northern Ireland) also received treatment.

Public Health Scotland, which releases its figures separately, responded to The Journal’s inquiries to say that it could not release information on the nationalities of non-residents who underwent abortions; the numbers were so low that it might breach privacy.

For example, in the most recent reported year, 2024, only seven women who weren’t known to be Scottish residents were recorded on the system, and that was the highest figure since 2019.

Cairns’ claim about the annual number of women seeking abortions in the UK each year is well backed up. It is an accurate, true claim. 

Additionally, we also have detailed statistics of fatal and non-fatal medical conditions in what are categorised as “Ground E” cases, referring to those where “there is substantial risk that, if the child were born, it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”.

(The terminology used here is from the Abortion Act in the UK from 1967. The language is generally considered outdated, but Ground E covers both fatal abnormalities and non-fatal disabilities.)

There were 130 such cases for Irish women in 2023, though cases where there were multiple grounds for the abortion, such as a risk to the life of the mother, are also included in that number.

It should be noted that the data indicates more than 100 of the Irish women who went to England and Wales for abortions in that year did not do so due to foetal abnormalities.

The original claim the Pro-Life Campaign wanted us to check was whether hundreds of women go to the UK each year for abortions because the foetus they are carrying has life-limiting conditions: the data indicates the answer is no; the figure is far fewer than 200. 

Second claim

If we remove the Ceann Comhairle’s interjection from the above transcript, and collate Cairns’ remarks together (she was reading from her notes), her second claim reads:

“An expert report recommending clarity on the provision of care in cases of foetal abnormality and the end to criminalisation of doctors was published in April 2023. For three years, the Government has ignored these recommendations and the result is hundreds of women like Denise who are forced to travel for care.”

The exchange can be seen here:

A spokesperson for the Social Democrats clarified that “these recommendations” in the statement by Cairns refers to the 2023 report as a whole, not just the two recommendations Cairns outlined.

The report Cairns mentions is the Review of the operation of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 overseen by Marie O’Shea.

The report, which is more than 100 pages of analysis, includes  “Conclusions/Recommendations” which is split into six sections, with many including sublists of individual suggestions up to five items long.

Among these, as Cairns outlined, were “decriminalising termination of pregnancy”, as well as clarifying how care should be provided under the Act.

The report also discusses how women are often “timed-out” of receiving treatment in Ireland for various reasons, including a first abortion attempt failing and a lack of capacity, as well as legal barriers like a mandatory wait period between consultations.

This is due to Irish law, in the words of the HSE, meaning: “After 12 weeks, you can only have an abortion in exceptional circumstances.”

These “exceptional circumstances” include pregnancies that put the mother at risk of death or serious harm, or conditions which are “likely to lead to death of the foetus either before or within 28 days of birth, because of a problem with its development”.

However, as was illustrated in the case told by Cairns of a woman who travelled to the UK, uncertainty over the baby’s viability may result in women being refused abortions in Ireland.

So, what do we know about the women travelling to the UK for terminations? Quite a lot.

The NHS makes public data specifically about patients from the Republic of Ireland, including some indications of why they are seeking abortions — though not why they are unable to do so in Ireland.

For example, we have data on their age, what counties they are from, their marital status (36% married, another 32% unmarried but with a partner), whether they had previous abortions (87% had not, another 11% had a single abortion prior), and the gestation stage of the foetus (2% between two and nine weeks).

We also have detailed statistics (outlined above) of medical conditions in “Ground E” cases.

However, despite the abundant data on abortions, estimating the number of women who would have had abortions in Ireland rather than the UK if the 2023 recommendations were enacted is impossible without making major assumptions.

While there are statistics for Ground E, these do not provide enough information by themselves to determine whether the condition would be fatal — and therefore whether they might be cases where greater clarity on rules would help.

For example, could the 55 congenital malformations counted in 2023 possibly be fatal in the month after birth? There isn’t enough information to tell.

There is a simpler, more direct reason we can’t use statistics to estimate the number of women who travelled to the UK for abortions since 2023: no data has been released yet from 2024, 2025 or this year.

The figures for Irish women receiving abortions in the UK for 2024 onward haven’t been released, but would require a dramatic plunge to not equal at least 200. If we assume such a drop didn’t happen, then in a very literal, formal logic sense, Cairns’ statement is almost certainly true.

She said that there was an expert report in 2023, the government did not enact its recommendations and, in the three years since, hundreds of women travelled for abortions.

All these statements are likely correct and refer to things that did actually happen.

In response to The Journal’s queries, a spokesperson for the Social Democrats said: “Hundreds of women have travelled for abortion care every year since our abortion legislation came into force and it is highly unlikely, given the government’s failure to act and implement the recommendations of its own expert report in 2023, that number has significantly decreased – even if there has been a time lag in publishing the most recent figures.” 

However, there is an implied counterfactual: if the government had enacted the report’s recommendations, hundreds fewer women would have travelled abroad for abortions.

Is this true? Counterfactuals are, by their nature, unprovable.

What we can say is that there was a report that identified multiple issues in the provision of abortions in Ireland. And Cairns outlined one case where it is likely that enacting the report’s recommendations would have resulted in the pregnant woman not seeking care in the UK.

We also know that the woman mentioned was not an isolated case. The 2023 report had already outlined that issue, noting that “half of the foetal medicine specialists expressed ‘uncertainty’ regarding a diagnosis as fatal” meaning they depended on their own definitions to interpret the legislation.

Therefore, it is plausible that had the recommendations been adopted, fewer women would have travelled to England for abortions. But would that number amount to “hundreds” since 2023? 

There is no way to tell. While we have a wide set of data from UK authorities, specifying which abortions would not have been carried out in the UK if a large set of changes had been made in Ireland requires making major (and results-altering) assumptions.

As such, we find the claim implied in Cairns’ statement is UNPROVEN, which, per our Reader’s Guide, means: the evidence available is insufficient to support or refute the claim, but it is logically possible.

To sum up:

The first of Cairns’ claims, that 240 women travel to the UK to access abortion care, is accurate and therefore we rate it as TRUE.

She did not say all 240 were linked to foetal abnormalities. Any suggestion to imply this would be false. We know a significant number of the 240 are not due to fatal foetal abnormalities.  

The second claim was that the government’s failure to enact recommendations given in April 2023 has resulted in hundreds of women travelling for abortions.

In a very strict, literal sense, this is likely. The recommendations were not enacted and, based on the previous trends, hundreds of women have almost certainly travelled for abortions since April 2023.

However, there is an implication that if the government had enacted those recommendations, hundreds fewer women would have travelled for abortions since April 2023. This is UNPROVEN — the data for 2024 onward hasn’t been released yet, and when it is unlikely to provide enough information to make that judgement.

There is also an unknown number of women with “Ground E” cases which would not be able to receive terminations in Ireland, even if all the recommendations of the report were passed.

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