Just when you thought the story couldn’t get worse about the 21-year-old Belfast woman who was given a suspended jail sentence for inducing her abortion, along come the people who shopped her to the police – her own housemates – to show the world how truly abhorrent it’s possible for humans to be. Here are some choice quotes from them in today’s Belfast Telegraph:
“This isn’t anything to do with the rights and wrongs of abortion. I’m not anti-abortion. I believe there are circumstances, like rape, where it should be a woman’s choice.
“This is about her attitude. It was as if she was getting rid of a piece of clothing,” she stated.
“There was absolutely no remorse. Even the way she was up and away out and doing her own thing a day after the abortion, while me and our other house-mate just walked around in shock.”
…
“It is just insane the way we are being portrayed as being the bad ones in this.”
So they didn’t report her out of some sense of civic duty, because she’d committed an offence. Abortion is illegal throughout Ireland in the case of rape, too, but apparently this housemate would have had no problem with that (even though the embryo would presumably look exactly like it did in this case). They reported her because she wasn’t sorry about her abortion. Because she had the absolute temerity to be able to get on with her own life after it. Because she didn’t feel the regret they think a woman should be obliged to feel after terminating an unwanted pregnancy. Because she didn’t hurt. So, they were going to make sure she did.
The housemates are clearly taking note of the reaction on social media, so allow me to add this one: Yes, you are the bad ones in this. You are awful. You are the worst people I have read or heard anything about today. I am disgusted to breathe the same air as you. I hope you step on a Lego for every remaining day of your terrible life.
The social media response is the one positive thing to come out of your despicable deed. For once, the people being shamed because of an abortion actually deserve it.
Feminist Ire 
Please make sure to differentiate between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. While they are equally poor at providing abortion services, it does the reporting a disservice to mix up two completely different countries with entirely different legal systems.
There was no mix-up and there is nothing to differentiate the two jurisdictions in this respect.
I agree with you, except in 1 aspect; while there were two housemates I felt it was clear that the 38 year old was the one who instigated the snooping and reporting. She seems to be quite sad in those comments. Recently had a miscarriage, confused and bereft she seems to have wanted to direct these younger women to fulfil her wishes.
The first one didn’t and didn’t give her the baby she wanted so the second was recruited to help punish.
I hope they get the help they clearly need, and some day they regret their decision and are thankful they are not the ones with the criminal record.
They’ve both done media now and neither one came out of it remotely sympathetic.
Her “friends” may have shopped her, but police officers also made a choice to charge her and the PPS made a call that it should go to court. Honestly, one of the worst aspects of this story is how it reflects on us, as Northern Irish citizens, for so many of us to have tolerated this situation for so long.
For my part, I am aghast at people’s reactions here. It looks like the height of hypocrisy that one should consider such whistleblowers as “snooping and reporting”. You can dismiss that abortion under these circumstances is DEFINITELY murder all you want, as much as it is considered by all that the slaying of a 100 year old person, is ALSO murder, no matter how ‘useless’, ‘vulnerable’, ‘in need of constant care’ and inconvenient that person may still be.
Unless a killing is done for the sake of self-defense (like in the case of an essential medical abortion), then it IS murder.
That aside, your logic and obvious condescension towards the two ‘informants’ for their reasons i.e. that the lady appeared to show no remorse about it is flawed. Law is enacted with a *moral* principle preceding it. It is the *moral* offense that matters at the end of the day, or else all law is just arbitrary.
And your defending the woman’s attitude that “she had the temerity to get on with her own life” shows that you are only looking at the plight of ONE of the parties concerned – the rejecting mother. Because you have shown absolutely ZIPPO concern for the life of an innocent, nay, you have not even had the honour to *mention* the child at all, gives you no moral high ground from which to wax your morals.
At the end of the day, abortion in 99% of its forms, is the killing of an unborn, innocent child. You cannot, *cannot* alter that reality, no matter how much you argue for the case of the mental health or convenience for the ‘mother’.
That aside, I am sorry for harsh words, and I wish you peace and good fortune in everything in life.
Law is enacted with a *moral* principle preceding it. It is the *moral* offense that matters at the end of the day, or else all law is just arbitrary.
As an actual lawyer, I couldn’t disagree with this more. But your moral principles aren’t authoritative, no matter how many caps and **s you use. Aborting a 10-12 week old embryo is not treated as murder in any legal system in the world that I am aware of. Why do you suppose that is?
Aborting a 10-12 week old embryo is not treated as murder in any legal system in the world that I am aware of. Why do you suppose that is?
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Can you answer this question?