Women are increasingly travelling to The Netherlands and other Continental European countries instead of Britain to access cheaper abortion services, according to the Well Woman Centre.
It said as many as four out of 10 women who use its post-abortion counselling service have their abortions performed in The Netherlands. Other countries emerging as new destinations include France, Spain, Belgium and the US.
While the numbers travelling to the Continent appear to be growing, the number of women giving Irish addresses at UK abortion clinics fell by 500 last year to 5,042.
Chief executive of the Well Woman Centre, Alison Vegas, said: "It's our assessment that the decrease in UK abortions statistics for Irish women is - in part - down to the fact that they are now travelling elsewhere. At this point we will only have a good overview of Irish abortion levels if we can secure statistics from other EU countries," she said.
"The cost of an abortion is significant and terminations in The Netherlands can be up to half the price of those in the UK. The increased availability of cheap flights and the euro means countries such as The Netherlands don't seem as daunting as they used to," she said.
In response to the growing numbers travelling further afield, the Crisis Pregnancy Agency has started researching where women are availing of abortion services. Its initial results also highlight The Netherlands as a major destination for women.
Separately, the Well Woman Centre has warned that the outsourcing of cervical smear tests to laboratories in the US could lead to inconsistencies in the interpretation of results by Irish doctors.
It said the move by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to outsource test analysis because of long delays in the Irish system could have serious ramifications for women with abnormal smears.
The method of reporting results in the US varied substantially to what was used in Ireland, and some doctors were reluctant to carry out tests because of the difficulty in interpreting results, it said.
"This compromises doctors and patients and could result in a potential abnormal result slipping through the net," she said.
Despite the move to outsource testing, she said there were still significant delays in the system with women waiting about three months to get a result.
Tom Finn of the HSE's National Hospitals Office insisted the test analysis conducted in the US met international standards. He said he would be happy to meet the Well Woman Centre to discuss its concerns.
He said the backlog - which caused the HSE to send samples to the US - had now been cleared, although this was strongly disputed by the Well Woman Centre yesterday.
The report also warned that women from poorer backgrounds were more likely to have abnormal smear results.
In an analysis of patients referred to hospital for a colposcopy - a visual examination of the cervix - following an abnormal smear result, the highest referral rate was among medical card patients.
"When figures are broken down, it became apparent that those on the GMS have a significantly higher rate of referral than private patients, even those from the same geographical location," Ms Begas said.
The overall trend in the numbers attending for full sexually transmitted infections (STI)screening in 2006 continued to increase, the report said.
