The Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) had its busiest year to date in 2004, with more than 100,000 requests for information via text message alone, it emerged at the launch of its annual report yesterday.
The upward trend looks set to continue this year, with over 61,000 text requests for information already via mobile phone.
The CPA hopes to hear proposals from the Catholic pregnancy counselling service Cura "in a few weeks" on whether it intends to implement the Positive Options campaign. Its funding of €654,000 per year may be cut if its proposals are not approved by the CPA.
Since the Catholic bishops last month told Cura to stop giving the CPA Positive Options leaflet to women seeking help, Cura counsellors have been referring women seeking information on abortion to their GP.
The Positive Options leaflet contains details of agencies which supply abortion information.
Cura receives more funding annually from the CPA than any other service. As part of its "service level agreement" it is expected to make available the Positive Options leaflet.
CPA's communications manager, Caroline Spillane, said it was the "interim position" of Cura to send women seeking abortion information to their GP. A firm proposal on how the service intended proceeding was necessary before the CPA would decide on future funding.
A Cura spokeswoman could not be contacted yesterday.
CPA chairwoman Olive Braiden said there had been a continuing improvement in availability of crisis pregnancy counselling. Availability had increased by 50 per cent since the CPA was established in 2001. But she expressed concern about the "unevenness" of service - with a particular dearth of services in Kerry and west Cork.
"I have long held the view that women who find themselves in a situation with a crisis pregnancy need to know that there are really good services on offer to them.
"They need to know there is a consistency between the services in one part of the country and another."
Minister for Health Mary Harney, who launched the report, said she would "like to give consideration" to extending the availability of the morning after pill.
She was responding to a health worker who said she was regularly coming across girls as young as 11 who were seeking the morning after pill.
The health worker added that it should be both free and available in pharmacies across the counter.
The latest figures from Britain indicate some 6,320 women travelled there from Ireland for an abortion in 2003.
