Abortions

Mr. Amess
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many therapeutic abortions were performed on women in Northern Ireland in each year since 1976, broken down by (a) age of the woman, (b) progress of the pregnancy and (c) health board area.

Paul Goggins
The Abortion Act 1967 does not extend to Northern Ireland. Consequently the termination of a pregnancy is not permitted except where necessary to save the life of the mother or where continuation of the pregnancy would involve risk of serious injury to her physical or mental health.

Due to the small numbers involved, information on medical abortions cannot be provided broken down by (a) age or by (c) health board of residence as requested without risking the possible identification of individuals.

Information on (b) the progress of the pregnancy is not available centrally.

The following table provides figures for the number of medical abortions recorded in Northern Ireland hospitals for each calendar year from 1995 (the earliest year for which robust data is available) to 2004 (the latest year for which information is available).

------------------------------------------------------
|                                  |Medical abortions|
------------------------------------------------------
|1995                              |72               |
------------------------------------------------------
|1996                              |64               |
------------------------------------------------------
|1997                              |80               |
------------------------------------------------------
|1998                              |71               |
------------------------------------------------------
|1999                              |76               |
------------------------------------------------------
|2000                              |82               |
------------------------------------------------------
|2001                              |75               |
------------------------------------------------------
|2002                              |76               |
------------------------------------------------------
|2003                              |73               |
------------------------------------------------------
|2004                              |59               |
------------------------------------------------------
|Total                             |592              |
------------------------------------------------------
|Source: Hospital Inpatients System|                 |
------------------------------------------------------