Question to the Northern Ireland Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many abortions were recorded in Northern Ireland in the last 12-month period; how many women resident in Northern Ireland were recorded as obtaining abortions in Great Britain in the same period; and in which hospitals in Northern Ireland surgical abortions have been performed.

Limited Early Medical Abortion (EMA) services are currently provided in Northern Ireland, but these fall short of the services that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland instructed the Northern Ireland Department of Health (DoH) to provide by March 2022. We are disappointed that the Executive has failed to provide services. As set out in his recent Written Ministerial Statement, the Secretary of State is committed, if necessary, to make regulations and directions to ensure abortion healthcare is delivered in Northern Ireland.

Information on the location of surgical abortions performed in Northern Ireland is held by the DoH. The latest publicly available data shows that between 1 April 2020 and 31 January 2022, a total of 2,794 notifications of termination were submitted to the Chief Medical Officer in Northern Ireland.

The most recent data published on women resident in Northern Ireland travelling to Great Britain for an abortion procedure is from 2020, where the number of women and girls travelling to England for abortion services was 371.