An explosive claim that the dates and times of abortion appointments at a Limerick hospital were leaked to pro-life activists so that protests could be timed to harass women, has been falsified by evidence from a freedom of information request, according to Gript media.

The released documents list every date on which an abortion was carried out in University Maternity Hospital Limerick [UMHL]. These were compared with a regularly scheduled prayer vigil consisting of a small number of women walking on the public streets outside UMHL in quiet prayer.

Rather than being held only on days in which abortions were carried out, there were only two instances between June of 2021 and April of 2022 in which the prayer vigil coincidentally occurred on the same day as an abortion.

Commenting on the investigation, Gary Kavanagh of Gript said :“So we have a group who have been meeting on the same day since September of last year, who have held multiple vigils which did not coincide with abortions, and who then had two of their vigils coincide with abortions due to the actions of UMHL, and this was presented as the group being leaked private medical information by sources within the hospital, an immensely serious charge which led to negative attention both for the prayer vigil and the hospital. And we now know that it all seems to have been entirely accidental and that the claims of the deliberate leaking of medical information to a pro-life group are baseless”.

Revealed: The abortion falsehood repeated again and again in the Dail