abortion in ireland

ndtv, May 02, 2016

Highlights

Regional elections to be held in Northern Ireland on Thursday
Prosecution of women over abortion emerges as key campaign issue
Abortion is banned in all cases except if mother’s life is in danger

Northern Ireland currently bans abortion in all cases except when the life of the mother is in danger. (Representational Image)

The prosecution of women in Northern Ireland over abortion has become a key campaign issue ahead of regional elections on Thursday, with unprecedented political support for reforming the law.

A 21-year-old woman was prosecuted earlier this year for taking pills to induce a miscarriage, while a mother has been charged after ordering medication over the Internet to help her daughter end an unwanted pregnancy.
The prosecutions have fuelled a campaign against one of Europe’s most stringent abortion laws and a backlash by anti-abortion campaigners and the Catholic Church who have urged voters to boycott candidates favouring reform.
“I am not coming at this from an ideological viewpoint but as someone who lives in the real world,” Ruth Patterson, an independent unionist candidate in the South Belfast constituency.
Patterson is one of a number of candidates calling for an extension of a more liberal abortion law covering the rest of the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland currently bans abortion in all cases except when the life of the mother is in danger.
More socially conservative than most parts of mainland Britain, it never adopted the laws on the issue governing the rest of the UK which were passed in 1967.
The only two European states with stricter laws — total bans on abortion — are Malta and the Vatican. Ireland also has tough legislation banning abortion in the vast majority of cases.

A ‘Backward’ Place

Cracks in the status quo, however, are beginning to appear.
The incumbent power-sharing administration in the UK province unites historic foes the Democratic Unionists — a mainly Protestant party which wants Northern Ireland to stay in the UK — and Sinn Fein, Catholic republicans who want a united Ireland.
Unionists and republicans were divided during three decades of sectarian unrest which killed around 3,500 people and was largely ended by a 1998 peace deal.
The Democratic Unionists pointedly fail to mention abortion in their election manifesto.
Sinn Fein has pledged to legislate in favour of abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, rape and incest.
Launching Sinn Fein’s manifesto this week, deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, claimed rival parties had “run away” from the issue of abortion.

Read full article: www.ndtv.com

thejournal.ie, March 30, 2016 by Kate Butler

The last government legislated for an individual’s autonomy in medical cases – except if you’re a pregnant woman, writes barrister Kate Butler.

CHRISTMAS TWO YEARS ago, a story emerged of such compelling sadness, but also of grotesque horrors, that it was hard to look away. A young woman, mother of two small children, was approximately 15 weeks pregnant when she was declared clinically brain dead.
The hospital that she reposed in – and another that she was transferred to – uncertain of the position of the foetus under the Constitution and fearful of prosecution under the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013, did not turn off the life-support machine.
This state of “experimental medicine”, as described by Dr Frances Colreavy – an expert in intensive care treatment at the Mater Hospital – continued for 20 days until the woman’s family brought an application to the High Court to allow them to end the life-support.
During the emergency Divisional Court hearing, P.P. v HSE, the view of the expert witnesses, as well as the HSE, was that there was no reasonable prospect of the baby being born alive if the life-support continued.
The court held that it was in the best interests of the unborn child to authorise the withdrawal of life support, and said that maintenance of life support would deprive the mother of dignity in death and subject her father, her partner and her young children to “unimaginable distress in a futile exercise”.
•    READ: This was not an abortion case, but the courts had to perform a circus balancing act
We can rationalise and package such sad, horrific stories as one-off cases. But the government knows that this situation could arise again: remarkably, it has even legislated for it, in one small sub-section of a very recent act.
The Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 was signed into law by the president last December. It includes governance on Advance Healthcare Directives (AHD): these allow people to draw up guidelines on how they would like to be treated medically, should they lose capacity into the future.
As former minister for health James O’Reilly noted, the AHD “has been recognised as an expression of an individual’s autonomy”.
Read full artile: www.thejournal.ie

Her.ie, March 8th 2016, by Cassie Delaney

As ridiculous as it is, I have money put aside in case I need an abortion.

Last week a new poll by Amnesty International revealed that 63% of the Irish population support abortion reform.
The poll, part of which was run in the final days of the general election campaign, found that the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland want access to abortion expanded (87%) and abortion decriminalised (72%).
Despite the overwhelming support from the Irish public, Fine Gael have remained pretty much silent on the issue. Enda Kenny believes the issue is too sensitive for a referendum but are willing to set up a forum similar to the Constitutional Convention to consider the matter.
Here, student Rachel O’Neill pens an honest and heartfelt letter to the new government about the need for social reform.

Dear new Government,
The voice behind the Repeal the 8th campaign has been rising steadily over the last few years and it has been brought to the fore recently with women such as Roisin Ingle, Tara Flynn and even more recently Susan Cahill sharing their stories about their abortions. It seemed to me that the tide was turning and with parties like Labour promising to hold a referendum on repealing the 8th amendment, I thought maybe I’ll get to vote on my reproductive rights. I was wrong.
The real losers of this general election are women. The decimation of the Labour party has put abortion on the back burner yet again. How many times are we going to let this key issue be pushed back? Fine Gael promised to hold a citizens convention if they were elected but that was based on the premise that they would go back into government as the majority party. The fact that this is won’t happen now makes me worry about what happens next for the 8th amendment.
Abortion has always been an invisible issue for us. We pretend it isn’t there. We pretend not to notice the 12 women a day leaving our shores to go to England and the Netherlands to have an abortion. We pretend not to notice the clear abandonment of these women by our government and health system. We pretend not to notice that abortion is a tangible, real thing in this country. We have some the strictest laws regarding abortion in the world and yet we’re still talking about it because it’s still there. As much as politicians want us to think it’s an “invisible issue”, it isn’t.
Read full article: www.her.ie

independent.co.uk, 11 February 2016 by Siobhan Fenton

Basil McCrea spoke of young couples having to abort their terminally ill foetuses in England and bring home their remains in a suitcase.

Pro Choice activists rally outside City Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in January Getty

This week, Protestant and Catholic politicians came together in a rare move of solidarity across the political divide at Stormont. In Northern Ireland’s divided society, there’s perhaps one thing on which ‘both sides’ can always agree: women do not deserve rights.
A vote was held on whether to amend the region’s abortion ban, which is currently among the most restrictive in the world. After the Belfast High Court ruled the ban is a breach of human rights legislation back in November, Stormont was given one last opportunity to amend it to allow abortions in the event of rape or incest, as well as a fatal foetal diagnosis which meant survival outside the womb would not be possible.
One politician, Anna Lo, who proposed the amendment in the case of rape or incest, telling her colleagues her experiences of working as an interpreter for the Northern Irish police and coming face-to-face with the distress of vulnerable women immediately after being raped – a distress compounded by fears of being forced to give birth to their rapists’ babies.
Another, Basil McCrea, spoke of young couples devastated to learn that their much -wanted pregnancy involved a defect which meant the foetus could not survive outside the womb, and who were forced to travel to England for an abortion and bring their child’s remains home in a suitcase.
Among Stormont’s otherwise often macho-posturing and aggressive politics, the vote was a rare one of raw emotion.
After hours of debate, on the cusp of midnight, Stormont voted no to both amendments and the abortion ban will remain in all cases.

Read full article: www.independent.co.uk

theguardian.com, 8 January 2016 by Sally Weale

A young man learns how to put on a condom at a Brook sex education class in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Paul McErlane for the Guardian

‘If a church school doesn’t believe in contraception, they won’t teach it.’ Family planning experts warn that ‘moralistic’ approach to some teenagers’ sex education is leaving vulnerable young people unable to make informed choices
Six teenage boys dressed in tracksuits are sitting in a classroom in a training centre in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Lined up in front of them are bottles of Vimto and Mountain Dew energy drinks – and a number of colourful plastic penises.

The boys, aged 17 and 18 and on a construction course, are having a condom relay as part of a sex education session. It’s a boisterous lesson – the boys crack non-stop jokes and laugh uproariously at each other’s quips. “This is the best class ever,” says one boy, gasping for air between gales of laughter.
They play a game called “Who’s the Daddy?” where they all receive the results of a pregnancy test sealed in an envelope and are asked to consider what they would do in the event of a positive result. They are appropriately solemn as they peel open the envelope.

“I’d try my best to explain it to my mum, then I’d run out of the house crying,” says one. Others coo over the idea of having their own baby. Not one of them would consider having an abortion. “That’s sick, because … that’s a child,” says one, and they all agree. They know it’s not legal in Northern Ireland, and not one of them is in favour of legalising it.

The young men in Coleraine are fortunate. Thanks to the sexual health charity Brook, which provides community-based sex education for young people in the province, they have had three half-day sessions to talk openly and honestly about every aspect of relationships and sex – including abortion – which is highly controversial in this part of the UK.
During this particular session, they have handed around 15 different types of contraception, discussing the pros and cons of each; they have squirmed in front of graphic pictures of every sexually transmitted infection (STI) known to humankind, as well as having considered the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy.

Read full article: www.theguardian.com

theguardian.com, 7 January 2016

A culture of fear, isolation and guilt is enshrined in law. The old political order should be thoroughly ashamed

An Alliance for Choice abortion rally in Parliament Square, London, in 2008. ‘Such is the macho, sectarian politics of Northern Ireland that the province remains saddled with Victorian law.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

To grasp the real meaning of the law on abortion in Northern Ireland, put out of mind the finger-jabbing abstractions of the Protestant politicians and the Catholic priests, and instead listen to the voices of the women who have lived with the practical consequences. This week they have been sharing their stories through the Guardian: tales of racking up debts to fund clinic fees in England, of lonely flights taken without the partner who should have been there to hold a hand, tales of seeking advice from doctors too fearful of prison to say anything useful, of sourcing illicit pills on the internet and fervently hoping that you’ve read the instructions right, and of the need to get your story straight before making a judgment about whether the bleeding has got to the point where A&E cannot be avoided.

Such terrible things are happening within the UK of 2016. One lesson is the sheer futility of presuming to second-guess the ethical and practical judgments that women make about their own wombs. However much a moralising lawmaker may wish to force a woman to carry on with a pregnancy she does not want, whatever obstacles he may put in the way of her taking control, he will often fail. When an unwanted pregnancy can warp a whole future, neither the travel costs nor the dangers of self-administered treatment will be a decisive deterrent, any more than the occasional horrors of the backstreet abortion prevented them happening back in Britain’s own Vera Drake days. The rest of the UK woke up to this reality half a century ago, with the Abortion Act of 1967. But such is the macho, sectarian politics of Northern Ireland that the province remains saddled with Victorian law, and indeed, in certain respects, the last few years have seen the regime of criminalisation become harsher.

Read full article: www.theguardian.com

theguardian.com, 7 January 2016 by Henry McDonald Ireland correspondent

Suzanne Lee, unable to afford to travel to England for abortion in 2012, bought the medically tested pills online

A young Northern Irish woman who broke the law by taking medically tested abortion pills bought online has challenged the Police Service of Northern Ireland to arrest her and the Public Prosecution Service in the region to prosecute her.
Suzanne Lee from Belfast, who took the pills in August 2012 during her third year at university, said: “Either you arrest me and charge me, or you change this law.”
Lee said that as a student she could not afford around £1,000 to go to England for a termination.
“I didn’t really want to go to England anyway as I wanted to be around people who knew what I was going through. I didn’t want it in this kind of clinical setting where no one knew me – where I was just another number – so the best plan of action was to order the abortion pills off the net.”
Other women who bought the pills online have told the Guardian they have wiped out their internet search histories and deleted their text messages in case the data is used as evidence against them in court.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where the 1967 Abortion Act does not apply. Under a 19th-century law – the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 – anyone carrying out an abortion except under some extremely limited circumstances can be jailed for life.
The climate of fear among women who have procured pills from the Women on the Web NGO and WomenHelp.org has intensified due to the recent prosecution of a Northern Irish mother. She faces trial for procuring abortion pills for her underage daughter. Pro-choice activists believe someone reported her to the PSNI after she visited a local hospital for post-termination care.
The woman has been charged with procuring a poison or other noxious substance, in this case mifepristone and misoprostol, in the knowledge that they were to be used to cause a miscarriage.
Read full article: www.theguardian.com

theguardian.com, 6 January 2016  by Juliette Jovit

Dutch activists provide link between Indian entrepreneur providing cost-price tablets and desperate people in places where terminations are otherwise unavailable

Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of the charity Women on Web, which helps those seeking an abortion. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Delicious smells permeate a small office in Nagpur as an elderly woman cooks lunch for the 40-odd staff: roti, steamed rice, moong bean dal, spicy potato hash and mutter paneer curry.

It’s all a long way, geographically and culturally, from the streets of Belfast nearly 5,000 away. But the two cities are joined by a hidden thread, a pharma pipeline that is helping many hundreds of women in Northern Ireland to get around its stringent anti-abortion law.

From the “Orange City”, as Nagpur, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, is known, a company called NN Agencies sources abortion pills that are freely available across India, and sends them to places where women can’t get abortions. Places such as Northern Ireland.
The man at the centre of the operation is Mohan Kale, a 45-year-old bespectacled entrepreneur with an easygoing nature.
Once this was a business for Kale, but influenced by his wife, Maitreyi, a social worker involved in sex education, he began supplying the tablets at cost (around 72 rupees – 72p – per set of nine pills compared with the retail price of around 900 rupees) to countries where it is illegal. Kale’s other companies make money by exporting treatments for chronic conditions such as diabetes.
“To me it is very clear that the choice of whether a pregnancy is desired or undesired and whether she wants it or not has to rest with a woman because it is her body,” he says, “and she has to have access to resources required to make an effective choice, no matter what the law of the land says.”

Each year more than 2,000 women travel from Northern Ireland to England to have pregnancies terminated, but Aishling was too frightened of being discovered by her boyfriend. She Googled medical abortion and found Women on Web.
“You can’t just say because it’s in another country it doesn’t affect you,” says Gomperts. “Human rights affect all of us.”

Read full article: www.theguardian.com

belfasttelegraph.co.uk,  23/12/2015

The Supreme Court has given the women permission to appeal

A teenager and her mother who are fighting for women from Northern Ireland to receive free abortions on the NHS in England are to have their case heard at the UK’s highest court.

Supreme Court justices are to hear their challenge against a Court of Appeal ruling earlier this year which went against them.
After their case was rejected by three judges in London in July they vowed to continue their “landmark” legal battle. Their lawyer announced at the time that they did “not intend to give up”.
The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that the court has granted them permission to appeal.
During the Court of Appeal proceedings, Lord Justice Moore-Bick, Lord Justice Elias and Lord Justice McCombe heard that the case was of considerable importance as an estimated 2,000 women and girls from Northern Ireland – where abortion is illegal apart from in exceptional circumstances – come to England for terminations every year.
The 18-year-old applicant in the case was aged 15 when she made the journey in October 2012 with her mother and was told she had to pay hundreds of pounds for a private termination because she was excluded from free abortion services.

Referred to in court as A to protect her identity, she and her mother challenged a decision made by Mr Justice King at the High Court in May last year that the exclusion was lawful.
The case was brought by A and her mother, referred to as B, who travelled from Northern Ireland to Manchester for A’s abortion.
When the case was before the High Court, Mr Justice King ruled that the Health Secretary was entitled to adopt a residence-based system so that women resident in Northern Ireland are not entitled to benefit from NHS abortion services in England, even though they are UK citizens.
He declared A had no right under Article 8 (right to privacy and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights to a state-funded abortion, and there was no breach of anti-discrimination laws under Article 14.
The appeal judges heard from Stephen Cragg QC, for the teenager and her mother, that the situation was causing desperation and stress for women and girls.
Read full article: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

huffingtonpost.co.uk, 02/12/2015 by Ann Furedi

Brian Lawless/PA Archive

It would take the hardest of hearts not to welcome Monday’s High Court judgement in Northern Ireland, which has opened the door for women pregnant as a result of rape or incest, or with a fetus affected by a fatal fetal abnormality, to access abortion.
Until now, under a nineteenth-century law that prohibits abortion, medical teams could be jailed for life for carrying out abortions even in these extreme circumstances. Unlike the rest of the UK, the Abortion Act 1967 has never applied to Northern Ireland, and since devolution Stormont has steadfastly rejected any suggestion that the law should be changed. Consequently, abortion is only permitted if the woman’s life is directly threatened, or if she would suffer serious and long-term damage to her health.
Mr Justice Horner may have changed this by ruling that the ban was in breach of human-rights law, and should be changed as it is ‘unlikely to be grasped by the legislature in the foreseeable future’. Still, it is not over yet. Following suggestions that the attorney general may appeal the ruling, and in light of Stormont’s previous intransigence, Horner has suggested that a referendum may be required to enact his conclusions.

A referendum on abortion in Northern Ireland could result in some interesting challenges for local politicians. In Northern Ireland, as in the Irish Republic, hundreds of women end unwanted pregnancies already. Either they travel to England or other European countries, where they must pay for treatment, or, increasingly, they obtain medication on the web, as well as through friends or self-help networks, to induce an early miscarriage at home. Neither of these options is ideal. Travel is expensive and self-treatment carries risks – medicines bought online are not always what you think they are. What’s more, when women try to go abroad, customs officials try to intercept them. However these methods have resulted in a significant change to the way abortion is understood: it is more normalised and openly talked about than ever.
Read full article: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk