Irish women are almost three times as likely to have late abortions than their British counterparts, according to figures from the UK's largest specialist abortion service.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service says almost four in 10 women from Ireland who had abortions with it since January 1997 did not receive counselling before travelling to the UK.
The service provided about 42 per cent of the more than 18,000 recorded abortions carried out in the UK on women giving addresses in the Republic between January 1997 and December 1999. Of the 6,214 Irish women recorded as having abortions in the UK last year, 2,445 attended the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.
Its figures, issued yesterday, show that 1,325 women - more than half of the Irish women who had abortions with the service last year - came from Cos Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow.
About one in 10 of all Irish clients - 266 women - gave addresses in Cos Cork and Kerry, while 208 women came from Clare, Limerick and Tipperary North Riding.
Fifty-three Irish clients were under 16, less than 1 per cent of the total of 8,281 abortions the service performed on Irish women between January 1997 and the end of last month. Seven in 10 of the women - 4,450 - were aged between 20 and 34 while one in 10 were aged between 35 and 44.
The majority of Irish women attending the service between January 1997 and the end of last month had abortions in the first 12 weeks of their pregnancy. However, 3.5 per cent, or 295 women, had abortions after 20 weeks. This is almost three times as many as their counterparts in the UK, where only 1.3 per cent of terminations are late, defined as after 20 weeks. Abortions are not normally carried out on women beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Ms Ann Furedi, from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said the number of Irish women having late terminations "may well be because of the additional obstacles they have to surmount to get over to Britain".
She said she had an Irish client who was 23 weeks and two days pregnant who had had an abortion with the service in the past three weeks. "She had delayed because she was trying to raise the money to come over and eventually had to borrow it from a friend," Ms Furedi said.
It was encouraging that Irish women were increasingly have earlier abortions, but there was no substitute for women being able to obtain services locally.
Just under 40 per cent of the Irish clients between January 1997 and the end of last month were self-referrals, which means they did not receive counselling in Ireland before travelling to the UK.