Abortion here looks like it will be opposite of ‘rare’

THE strategy suggested by Dr Brendan O’Shea (‘How to keep abortion numbers down? Free contraception and better education’, Comment, February 20) for reducing abortion numbers here has already been tried in Switzerland.

While this strategy appears to have reduced Swiss abortion rates considerably, to rank among the lowest in European countries, their rates are still double Ireland’s abortion rates under the Eighth Amendment.

Dr O’Shea will be aware that the Irish College of General Practitioners has estimated there will be 10,000 abortions per year under the new abortion regime, but I get the impression from his article he expects it to be higher than this. He also seems to assume we must all wait a year to find out. Surely the first two months’ data would give us some indication of what to expect in a year?

While he details certain teething problems with the new “service”, and is quite dismissive of the three-day waiting period, it is odd that he has nothing at all to say about the State paying GPs a fee for abortion services which is considerably higher than the fee paid for managing a pregnancy to birth, despite continuing pregnancies requiring far more GP visits than medical abortions.

Leo Varadkar said before the referendum that he wanted abortion here to be “rare”. Everything in Dr O’Shea’s article suggests that we are heading in the opposite direction.

Jim Stack

Lismore, Co Waterford