The Ombudsman for Children found nearly 7,700 babies may not have had their nine-to-11-month health check on time last year. A country that cherishes every child should make sure someone knocks on every door.

On 3 November the Southern Trust Board voted to stop births at Daisy Hill Hospital from 23 November. The Trust calls it temporary but has given no date for births to return. The numbers behind the decision are worth reading slowly.

The Pro Life Campaign has told the UN that no woman should feel compelled to end a pregnancy because of money, housing or childcare. Ireland's abortion numbers rose from 2,911 in 2018 to 10,600 in 2025.

A solicitor's wife died alone in a hospice during the pandemic. He now asks Ireland to legalise assisted dying. But what she asked for was company, comfort and home.

New HSE guidelines say almost 5% of women with severe pregnancy sickness end a wanted pregnancy because of their symptoms. They are asking for compassion, early treatment and real support for mother and baby.

Cork's Domino midwife scheme gave mothers the same few familiar faces from first check to first week home, until staff shortages pulled its midwives onto the labour ward. Today a petition of more than 2,500 names asks CUMH to bring it back in full.

At the Pro Life Campaign conference in Dublin, 22-year-old Philomena Tierney and others asked why women who used the three-day wait and continued their pregnancies were refused a hearing on Sinn Féin's bill to abolish it.

Thousands marched through Newry to save maternity services at Daisy Hill Hospital, where a plan would send women in labour an hour or more to Craigavon. On Tuesday, campaigners meet the Health Minister at Stormont.

A new Cork pathway, CP PROMPT, helps GPs spot early signs of cerebral palsy in babies under one and fast-tracks them to a specialist clinic, where therapy can start while tests are still going on.

High-risk pregnancy care left Portiuncula in July 2025. The reviews are almost done, yet the HSE has no plans to bring it back, and can't say where the women went.

The new National Maternity Hospital has been approved, with 244 single rooms and 10,000 births a year. Good news. But a building is not the same as care, and every mother and baby deserves people with time to listen.

A doctors' leader warns every maternity negligence case costs a midwife, while families wait about five years for an ending that almost always comes as a settlement on the steps of the court.

On Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, three Irish mothers share the babies they lost: Max, born silent; Grace, who lived thirty-one minutes; and Dessie, whose name is said out loud.

Two Irish maternity hospitals have no perinatal mental-health midwives, and five more offer the service only Monday to Thursday. For a mother at three in the morning, that empty chair matters.

She had never written to a minister before. Her email is one of a pile sent to the Health Minister about ending private maternity care at the Rotunda, and nearly all of them ask for the same thing: a familiar face.

Every culture answers one question: what is one human life worth? Some answer precious. Others answer expendable for a “greater good.”

Six years of official figures raise a difficult question: what happened to the “rare” part?

Since 2019 Ireland has recorded 57,461 abortions and 264 murder or manslaughter victims — about 217 for every one.

Jessica was at the incubator when she saw the swelling. In Carrignavar, neighbours chose not to look away from Jade — the smallest baby in that intensive care unit.

The Irish Times reported that around 10,600 abortions took place in Ireland in 2025, after 10,852 in 2024. Of the 2024 figure, 10,445 were under 12 weeks, 25 were on grounds of risk to the life or health of the woman, 13 were emergencies, and 117 were for fatal foetal anomaly. The Independent has put the 2019–2024 total at 46,861. These are not slogans. They are the State's own record. On 3 July 2026 the HSE published its first termination of pregnancy report. The numbers are