Bishop Kevin Doran The Bishop of Achonry and of Elphin has said that the bishops are disturbed by the many attempts by politicians to expand abortion by abolishing the mandatory three-day waiting period.
“We find it quite disturbing that there have been so many attempts in recent months to expand the scope of abortion as if the killing of babies was some kind of political objective.” He added that before the publication on Sunday last of the bishops statement ‘Offering Hope in Crisis’, “Sinn Fein has announced yet another bill to remove the three-day ‘cooling off period’, which gives women an opportunity to reflect on what they are proposing to do and to choose a more life-affirming solution. The various bills, while different in some respects, are all about ‘more abortion’.”
Bishop Doran said that the primary concern of the bishops is to “alert the Catholic faithful to the gravity of the situation that has developed over recent years. Some journalists asked where we got the statistics of 50,000 abortions. That is a cumulative figure based on official Government statistics, for the period 2019-2024, (having in mind the fact that the 2025 figures are not yet available) and it is, quite frankly, strange that journalists would not know that. These are not just statistics, but individual human lives, and we want people to be conscious that each life lost has meaning and significance.
“We are asking people to work towards a more positive outreach to and support for women in crisis pregnancy, and indeed after abortion, which is totally absent even from the current legislation”, he said.