The Community of Madrid registered 18,221 voluntary interruptions of pregnancy in 2025, of which only 92 were carried out in public hospitals. Only one was by surgical method, according to the regional epidemiological report.
The Ministry of Health announced this Monday that it will promote the incorporation of pharmaceutical abortion into the Primary Care service portfolio, a measure that has once again highlighted the differences between autonomous communities. In the Community of Madrid, the 2025 data reflects that the provision still depends almost entirely on contracted clinics: of the 18,221 voluntary interruptions of pregnancy (IVE) performed on residents, only 92 took place in public hospitals, according to the regional epidemiological report published in August and reported by publico.es.
The other 18,129 were carried out in accredited centres with public funding. This proportion places activity in the public network at around 0.5% of the total, while the 99.5% remaining is concentrated in accredited clinics. Of those 92 interventions in public hospitals, only one was performed by surgical or instrumental method, despite this procedure being used in 93.9% of the IVEs carried out on Madrid residents during the year.
Abortion is a right, but Ayuso disregards it. The freedom she boasts about is only for herself. Women in Madrid should be able to abort in public healthcare, yet again, the number of abortions performed in hospitals is laughable," criticised Lorena Morales, spokesperson for Women of the Socialist Group in the Assembly of Madrid and secretary of Equality of PSOE-M.
Morales added that, if it is considered that "accredited clinics are under conditions of true suffocation", the goal attributed to the regional government is that women "cannot abort either in public or accredited clinics, forcing us to go elsewhere to have an abortion".
The Ministry of Health, led by Mónica García, has announced that it will modify the royal decree regulating the authorisation of health centres to adapt the service provision requirements to health centres. It will also initiate the procedures to modify the technical sheet of mifepristone, one of the drugs used in abortion, to allow its use outside of the exclusively hospital setting. Additionally, it will update the common service portfolio of the National Health System to expressly incorporate this care.
The 2023 abortion law reform, promoted by the Ministry of Equality, reinforced the obligations of public services. The regulation establishes that women must receive information about the two existing methods, surgical and pharmaceutical, and about the public and accredited centres they can go to. In Madrid, 72.8% of the IVEs performed on residents in 2025 were publicly funded, a percentage similar to that of 2024 (72.9%).
The trend has remained stable for years. Between 2017 and 2020, the percentage of abortions with public funding hovered around 75%; it dropped to 71.8% in 2021 and 70.8% in 2022, and since then it has been around 72% (72.5% in 2023, 72.9% in 2024, and 72.8% in 2025). This indicates that most interventions are not directly funded by women, but are predominantly carried out outside public hospitals.
Another piece of data from the report indicates that 49.1% of the women who had abortions in 2025 received information for the first time about the possibilities, conditions, and funding of the IVE in a public health centre, compared to 8.2% who initially obtained it in a contracted or private centre.
The ministerial announcement coincides with the International Safe Abortion Day, which was commemorated this Monday. The regulatory modification proposed by Health would affect the authorisation requirements of Primary Care centres to dispense the pharmaceutical method, which could change the care circuit in communities like Madrid, where almost all IVEs are referred to accredited clinics.
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