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InvestigatesExporting AbortionTHOUSANDS OF WOMEN have to travel to neighbouring countries in Europe to access abortion care due to barriers faced at home.
A cross-border investigation, Exporting Abortion, exposes this stark statistic for the first time, following an extensive examination of data and personal testimonies across Europe.
Our analysis found that more than 5,000 women travel from their home countries every year due to the difficulties they face in accessing abortion care. In 2023, that number was at least 5,860.
This figure is being revealed as a result of months-long research coordinated by Spanish outlet Público, with The Journal Investigates as a core partner. This investigation was conducted by journalists from across the continent and published by 11 media outlets.
The reasons behind this phenomenon vary. Sometimes women realise they are pregnant after the legal deadline for abortion has passed. In other cases, the foetus has a malformation that local doctors do not consider serious enough to terminate the pregnancy.
This includes Ireland, where even after the repeal of the Eighth Amendment in 2018, allowing for greater access to abortion services, women continue to encounter bureaucratic hurdles that force them to travel.
The most recent year with available data is 2023, but the pattern repeats year after year. Between 2019 and 2023, women travelled at least 27,200 times to another country within Europe to have an abortion.
The number represents just the tip of the iceberg.
It includes only those abortions performed on European women residing in other countries and carried out in 10 countries, including Ireland and the UK, as well as some Polish women in Germany and Austria. Other countries don’t even collect official abortion data.
Additionally, Belgium has not yet published its statistics for 2022 and 2023, the UK has not released its 2023 data and Switzerland only began collecting this information in 2022.
Our investigation also found there is a growing trend of women ordering and taking abortion pills in countries where abortion rights are highly restricted. This happens outside formal healthcare, leaving women without medical supervision.
This trend is particularly evident in Poland and Malta, which have among the most restrictive abortion laws in the EU. Official statistics do not record this.
Carol McLoughlin already had two children when she became pregnant again in 2022 in Ireland. She wanted to be a mother once more, but medical tests soon showed that something was wrong.
It wasn’t until after the 12th week of pregnancy — when the legal limit for abortions on request ends in Ireland — that she was told the foetus’s organs were not developing.
Because the underlying reason was a diagnosis of Down syndrome, she was told she would have had to wait for the baby’s heart to stop beating to be treated. Instead, Carol travelled to London to have an abortion. She told us:
I couldn’t stand the mental anguish of waiting for my baby to die.
Olga, a Polish woman, was sure from the beginning that she didn’t want to become a mother. Her country has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the entire continent. When she got pregnant in 2019, she took a bus, accompanied by a friend, to have an abortion at a clinic in Ostrava in Czechia.
She is among hundreds of Polish women who seek help in Czechia. Their numbers have increased since the enactment of extremely repressive abortion laws in Poland.
At the age of 30, Juliana*, a Brazilian woman living in Portugal, did not want to have another child. She found out she was pregnant at 13 weeks of gestation when she started to have nausea.
Terminations on request are only allowed in Portugal up to 10 weeks, so she crossed the border into Spain where abortion is freely available up to 14 weeks.
Across Europe, data shows that Spain receives among the highest number of women traveling for abortions.
The stories of Carol, Olga and Juliana are also the stories of thousands of European women who still have to travel to other countries in the continent to get an abortion.
The reasons why European women need to travel to another country to get an abortion are varied.
Many do so because the law in their home country does not allow it — either because abortion is outright banned, because the legislation is extremely restrictive, or because they have surpassed the legal time limit for terminating a pregnancy.
Others travel because they prefer to undergo a different method than the one offered in their country. For example, women from countries where only surgical abortion is permitted — such as Slovakia — sometimes prefer the medical method, either by purchasing pills online or by travelling to a country where they can access this option.
Another reason why women sometimes go abroad to get an abortion is the lack of medical facilities or professionals who provide the procedure in their area. This can be exacerbated by conscientious objection.
And beyond all these obstacles, living in a country with more permissive laws is still no guarantee of access to abortion. In these countries, problems arise, most of the time, in pregnancies where foetal anomalies or malformations are detected at a later stage.
Some doctors refuse to carry out the termination if they do not consider the condition severe enough. Again, in these cases, women are forced to seek alternatives abroad.
Wherever the law or healthcare professionals impose limits on abortion, women are forced to travel.
All the experts interviewed by the investigation team reached the same conclusion. Dr Jozef Záhumenský, head of the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at University Hospital in Bratislava-Ružinov, Slovakia, said:
Banning abortion doesn’t solve anything.
“It only causes abortion tourism and a loss of control by the State and society.”
The data collected by the Exporting Abortion project confirms his point. We found that the stricter a country’s abortion law, the more women cross borders to terminate their pregnancies.
The top destination is the Netherlands where termination is allowed up to the 24th week of pregnancy. Nearly half (48%) of all abortions compiled by our investigation team took place there.
In the past five years, over 13,100 women from other European countries have had abortions in the Netherlands.
That is in spite of Dutch healthcare centers only registering the data of patients from Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland and Poland. Abortions performed on women from countries such as Spain, Portugal and Malta go uncounted.
The Exporting Abortion investigation also uncovered the main flows of movement within Europe — in other words, the most commonly travelled routes for women who go abroad to get an abortion.
The main routes are shaped by the countries’ abortion laws — and often also by geographic proximity.
The most frequent route is that of residents of Germany travelling to the Netherlands. Every year, more than 1,000 women make this trip.
In Germany, abortion is legal up to the 12th week of pregnancy. Some do not discover their pregnancy until it is too late, and others do not manage to get an abortion in time due to the regulations and regional gaps in abortion care in Germany.
Women in Ireland told us of similar reasons as to why they were unable to access abortion care before the cutoff of 12 weeks. We detail their stories in a separate article later this week.
The second most common route is that of women living in Portugal who travel to Spain. More than 500 women a year make this trip. This is because of legislative differences. While Portugal allows abortion on request up to the 10th week of pregnancy, in Spain the limit extends to the 14th week.
French women also travel. An average of 526 go to the Netherlands each year for an abortion and another 454 go to Spain. Legal time limits are the main reason behind these journeys.
Until 2022, France allowed abortion on request up to 14 weeks gestation. In March that year, the limit was extended to 16 weeks — calculated, as in most European countries, from the first day of the last menstrual period.
The implementation of the new limit in 2022 reduced the number of French women seeking abortions in the Netherlands and Spain. But many still travel there as abortion is allowed for longer.
It is available up 24 weeks in the Netherlands and, though legal up to 14 weeks across Spain, it is relatively easy to have a termination in regions such as Catalonia up to the 22nd week of pregnancy.
Sarah Durocher, president of the French NGO Planning Familial, told us:
What we want is to stop forcing women to travel abroad.
To that end, the association is campaigning to eliminate the legal time limit “or at least to authorise abortion up to a minimum of 22 weeks”.
Every year, around 240 women cross from Ireland over to our neighbours in the UK to access abortion services. The numbers crossing have dropped since Ireland voted to allow greater access to abortion services in 2018, but many continue to be forced to travel due to time restrictions.
“It’s the most vulnerable who are still being exported to access care,” said Ciara McHugh, helpline coordinator for the Abortion Support Network (ASN).
The only exception among the 10 most common routes that does not involve neighbouring countries is the one taken by Polish women who go to the Netherlands.
Every year, around 470 women travel from one of the EU’s most restrictive countries to the most liberalised ones — despite the distance between them.
All of these flows have been verified by the Exporting Abortion team after collecting data and statistics from 10 European countries.
The Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Czechia and Slovenia collect information about the country of residence of women who have abortions in clinics and hospitals on their territory.
But other common flows are impossible to quantify with official data because the countries receiving these women do not collect or publish this information.
Abortion rights are the subject of constant ideological battles among those vying for power in various European countries.
As a result, the recognition of this right and access to this service often depends on the political leaning of the party in government. Amid the growing rise of the far right in parts of the world, several initiatives are seeking ways to safeguard access to abortion.
One such example is what France did in 2023 by including in its Constitution the “guaranteed freedom of women to access to termination of pregnancy on request”.
However, Lisa Carayon, professor at the Sorbonne Paris Nord University, told us that the measure has had a more evident impact “at the level of international politics” than in terms of better access to abortion in the territory. It “gives hope” to feminist movements around the world, she said.
One of the most prominent efforts is the My Voice, My Choice (MVMC) movement, which has collected nearly 1.5 million signatures to launch a European Citizens’ Initiative urging the European Commission (EC) to ensure safe and accessible abortion for all European women.
The movement is calling for the EC to create a funding mechanism to provide safe abortion care to all those without access. Veronika Povž, communication director of the campaign said:
“Those with enough money can travel for an abortion — there’s always a way for them. But it’s the marginalised groups and those who can’t afford it who suffer the most.”
*Names have been changed
Support services:
Ireland — Reporters: Órla Ryan & Maria Delaney • Editor: Maria Delaney • Main Image Design: Lorcan O’Reilly • Social Media: Cliodhna Travers
Exporting Abortion is a cross-border investigation coordinated by Público (Spain) in collaboration with journalists from more than ten countries:
Joana Ascensão (Portugal – Expresso), Kristina Bohmer (Slovakia), Magdalena Chrzczonowicz (Poland – OKO.press), Mayya Chernobylskaya (Germany), Nacho Calle (Spain – Público), Maria Delaney (Ireland – The Journal Investigates), Joanna Demarco (Malta), Armelle Desmaison (France), Emilia G. Morales (Spain – Público), Bru Noya (Andorra), Apolena Rychlíková (Czechia), Órla Ryan (Ireland – The Journal Investigates), Sergio Sangiao (Spain – Público), Margot Smolenaars (Netherlands).
This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
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