Carol Nolan TD The current state of national data collection with regards to abortion and its adverse outcomes are worse than “abysmal”, according to Laois-Offaly TD Carol Nolan.
Deputy Nolan’s comments come following a report that 12,000 women in England and Wales have been treated in hospital for complications arising from medical abortion treatment failure.
It is understood that medical abortion has an expected treatment failure rate of 6%, which means that as many as one in 17 pregnant women using abortion pills will need hospital treatment for complications arising afterwards.
Data collection procedures in Ireland for the same phenomenon are “far worse” than abysmal, Deputy Nolan told this paper, continuing, “They are totally absent.
“Even by the HSE’s own admission such a process is needed to guide the ‘quality review process’ and to accurately assess how the implementation of the abortion Act is impacting women and girls,” she said.
“What could not be clearer at this point is the fact that there is just no institutional appetite to create mechanisms of genuine transparency around the provision of abortion,” Deputy Nolan said.