Dr. Patricia Lohr:

We know from maternal mortality data that are collected in the UK that the risk of continuing a pregnancy to term and delivering a baby is higher than that of having an abortion at almost any gestational age in the first and second trimester. Giving birth has got safer in the UK in the last few years and having an abortion is extremely safe. The reports on maternal mortality for the triennium of 2006 to 2008, which the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, RCOG, refers to in its abortion guideline, state that 107 direct deaths were associated with pregnancy out of 2.29 million maternities, giving a rate of 11.39 per 100,000 maternities. In comparison, two abortion-related deaths were reported in that triennium, of 628,342 abortions, which works out to a rate of 0.32 deaths per 100,000 maternities. I looked at some of the reports published since. Maternal mortality at the time of birth has gone down somewhat and the rate of deaths from abortion has not increased.

The Deputy's second question was about counselling for women from Ireland. I can speak for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS. We make our telephone counselling services available to women from Ireland. They could access in-person counselling with us if they so wished but that would mean coming back to the UK. We provide women with phone-based counselling, which many women prefer. They usually only need a few discussions but can have as many as they need.

The Deputy asked about the rate of abortions across European countries. I am not an epidemiologist but looking at where the UK sits in the list of European countries, which the Deputy might have been shown a slide of in an early presentation, we are comparable. Abortion may have a higher rate in some countries than others for various reasons, as variable as the reasons women choose abortion but they are typically and commonly related to the availability of contraceptive services so where contraceptive services are widely available and funded, we tend to see a lower abortion rate. One sometimes sees cases where abortion services are well-funded, for example, in the UK, where women still avail themselves of having an abortion when they feel the need to end a pregnancy by termination.