Tag Archives: abortion

Pregnant Child Detained in Mental Institution For Asking For An Abortion

Posted on June 12, 2017 by Taryn de Vere

To access a life saving abortion in Ireland requires 3 medical professionals (two psychiatrists and one obstetrician) to agree that the woman is at risk of taking her own life. As the recent case of a young girl shows it only takes one psychiatrist however to get sectioned for wanting an abortion in Ireland.

The girl was legally classed as a child and her identity has understandably been withheld so we know nothing more about her other than that she had an unwanted pregnancy and that when she sought an abortion from her healthcare professionals she was of the understanding that she was being taken to Dublin for the procedure. However unbeknownst to her the consultant psychiatrist had given evidence at a hearing to detain her under the Mental Health Act.

“The consultant psychiatrist was of the opinion that while the child was at risk of self harm and suicide as a result of the pregnancy, this could be managed by treatment and that termination of the pregnancy was not the solution for all of the child’s problems at that stage.”

How frightening it must have been for her to find herself in a mental hospital after travelling to Dublin expecting an abortion. We are told it was “days” later that another hearing was held that resulted in her discharge from the mental hospital. During this time her court-appointed guardian ad litem (GAL) had employed another consultant psychiatrist to access her and on the basis of their evidence the girl was released from the institution. She spent unnecessary “days” in a mental institution for the “crime” of nothing more than wanting an abortion.

I’ve heard numerous reports of suicidal people trying to access mental health units in Irish hospitals who have been sent away. In future I’ll suggest to those of them who are capable of getting pregnant to say they’re pregnant and want an abortion, as that seems to be a sure way to get sectioned.

This case raises a number of questions. How is it that it only took one psychiatrist to have the girl sectioned? Why was the PLDP act not enacted for this pregnant, suicidal child? How can the public be assured that the personal beliefs of medical professionals won’t interfere with them being able to access the healthcare they need? Did Government Ministers know of the case at the time?

Abortion Rights Campaign (ARC) spokesperson Linda Kavanagh said:

“Looking at the report, it’s hard not to think that the psychiatrist in this case essentially used the Mental Health Act as a tool to force a child into continuing an unwanted pregnancy because of their own personal beliefs. It is clear we need some process which ensures medical professionals with such conscientious objections cannot block timely health care in critical cases.”

This is the latest case in a long line of women and girls who have been failed by the state. Ms X was another suicidal child prevented from accessing an abortion in 1992 and Ms Y a teenage rape victim likewise led to believe she would be given an abortion and instead detained against her will. Ireland has a disgraceful history stretching back to the Magdalene Laundries of locking up pregnant women.

The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act is supposed to “protect” women who are at risk of taking their own lives, not used as a tool to lock women who want abortions up.

The Irish Government are allowing this human rights abuse to happen on their watch, leaving a trail of abused and sometimes dead women, girls and children behind them.

Rally to Repeal is on Saturday 17th in Dublin. If you can’t go please contact your local T.Ds and ask them to urgently implement the findings of the Citizens Assembly.

You can sign an UPLIFT petition here:https://action.uplift.ie/campaigns/187

*I’d like to acknowledge the work of the Child Law Project. We would know nothing of this case if it wasn’t for their work. Since 2012 they have been able to report to the public on child care proceedings in the courts, they aim to report on 10% of cases.

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Posted in Abortion, Equality, feminism, gender, Health, Politics, Reproduction, Violence against women and tagged abortion, Abortion in the Republic of Ireland, abortion rights, Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland, Ireland, mental health in ireland, politics, reproductive rights. Bookmark the permalink.

Laying the groundwork with young children to talk to them about choice

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Sinéad Redmond

I’m sharing this for any other parents of younger children who might find it useful. My 4 year old is OBSESSED with pregnancy at the moment, has been for a good while. Discussions on how to talk to your children about abortion come up a lot in Parents for Choice. I haven’t done that in detail yet with her though I have mentioned once or twice that sometimes people don’t want to stay pregnant.

What Makes a Baby children’s book

BUT what I am doing is being very careful in the language I use about pregnancy. I don’t tell her people have “a baby in their tummy”, we talk about people having baby seeds that are growing into babies. When they’ve finished growing into a baby they’re ready to be born. This book is great for a basic explanation of conception that suits all kinds of families (definitely not the case for the vast majority of pregnancy books which are obsessed with married straight white couples) but where it falls down for me is talking about a 5 week embryo as a baby, so I do some editorial reading with Ailbhe and talk about these as baby seeds until the 38 week one which is a baby. It works really well and makes sense to her, we’re growing a sunflower from a seed in our windowsill at the moment. She demanded her daddy read it to her the other day while I was at work and informed him they were all baby seeds up until the 38 week one!

I’m doing this because I don’t want to be trying to explain to a seven year old who’s asking me questions about abortion that actually a 7 week embryo or whatever it is isn’t actually a baby in someone’s tummy as I’ve been telling her all along and so that it won’t strike her as something as immediately shocking as I think it otherwise might. I’m posting in case it might help others in the same situation.

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Posted in Abortion, The family and tagged abortion, children, choice, parenting, pregnancy. Bookmark the permalink.

How to have an abortion when you’re in Ireland

Posted on April 24, 2017 by Stephanie Lord

(A Rough Guide to Ireland – Part 1)

So you’re pregnant and you don’t want to be. What next? First things first – commiserations on finding yourself in this situation. It’s shit and it might get a bit worse before it gets better, but there are people out there who are rooting for you and hopefully you find the information in here a little bit useful. This is basically a step by step guide to getting through this situation.

positive test

Are you definitely definitely definitely pregnant?

Take a test. You can buy them in every pharmacy and they cost between €10/€20. Sometimes they sell them really cheap in Dealz and sometimes other pound shops for around €1.50/€2. If you’re embarrassed about buying it or worried someone might see you, consider asking a trusted friend to go and buy it for you. If you’re worried about what the shop assistant might think, just try and look excited. The chances are the sales assistant is selling these every day and will not pay any heed to you anyway. If you’re not sure about the home test you took, the IFPA carry out testing for €20 but it’s free if you have a medical card. Cura and Sexual Health Centre in Cork offer free pregnancy testing. Having an early scan so you can figure out how far along you are might be useful if you aren’t sure. You can get a free scan at FemPlus in Dublin and there are places around the country offering scans at a variety of locations with an average cost of around €100. The Abortion Support Network can tell you where the best place to go for a scan is. A scan will also confirm that the pregnancy isn’t ectopic. If you can’t get to a scan or afford a scan the most important thing when determining how far along you are is that you need to be counting from the first day of your last menstrual period, not from when you had sex.

Marie Stopes Reproductive Choices will provide you with a consultation and a scan but where they will charge €110 (or €90 for a phone consultation). It’s important to note that Marie Stopes’ clinics in Britain absolutely will not perform a procedure if you do not have the correct payment for it.

Decide if counselling is for you

Perhaps you’ve made a decision not to continue your pregnancy, or maybe you feel you want to chat confidentially about that decision with someone else. Here are a list of clinics that are legit crisis pregnancy clinics. The IFPA section about their counselling service has some useful links and shows the locations where they provide services around Ireland. When you go to these counselling services in those links, the counsellor is legally obliged to tell you about your options including parenting and adoption. Remember, whether or not you continue your pregnancy is your choice, and you need to do what’s right for you.

Be aware that there are other unethical “crisis pregnancy” services out there that are designed not to assist women but to push their anti-choice agenda.

You might not want to go to counselling, but bear in mind that it’s free and if you go to counselling with either Irish/ Northern Irish FPA, Well Woman, Femplus Clinics, One Family, Cork Sexual Health or here2help, and subsequently attend BPAS for a termination, you won’t have to pay the €80/€90 counselling fee that BPAS charge. A letter from the IFPA to say you attended counselling will waive the counselling fee charged at *any* English clinic.

There are lots of women who make their decision the second they find out they’re pregnant. There are lots who take some time to decide on their own. There are others who go to counselling. Do what works for you – but as soon as you make your decision to have an abortion, start the ball rolling on making the appointment.

So you’ve made a decision to have an abortion, what now?

How you proceed in accessing an abortion from here on, really depends on how much access to money you have. If you have money you can travel overseas to access termination services, and I’ll go into the logistics of this later. If you don’t have money to travel, there are still options.

The Abortion Support Network are an organisation that offer practical, non-judgemental information and advice, financial help and, when needed, accommodation in volunteer homes. They provide guidance on what is the cheapest way for you to have your abortion, and which clinics will be the best choice for you. Ring them before you make any appointment and travel plans. If it is a particularly busy time of year for UK clinics it may be cheaper and quicker for you to travel to the Netherlands or Brussels for your treatment (although you will definitely need a passport to travel there from Ireland). ASN has a network of volunteers in UK cities that will provide accommodation and meals for those who need or want to stay overnight – most women are able to travel in and out in one day.

The Abortion Pill

Abortion is illegal in almost all cases here so many women who don’t have the money to travel (or it simply is not an option for them because of their immigration status or relationship status or age or childcare arrangements) will illegally order the abortion pill from Women Help Women. The abortion pill is a safe medicine.

Some women in the 26 Counties have found that when they ordered this online that it was confiscated by Customs but to our knowledge, nobody has been prosecuted for attempting to receive pills online. In the 6 Counties however, there have been prosecutions for attempting to procure a miscarriage (there are criminal penalties for this in both jurisdictions). There are difficulties in ordering online, but it isn’t impossible. The medication is usually supplied in exchange for an €80 donation. Need Abortion Ireland help women access medications from Women Help Women.

Women on Web are another organisation that can sometimes deliver to Ireland. The organisation ROSA have twice partnered with Women on Web to drive a bus around Ireland to do consultations for pills and then the pills will be posted to you a few days later. This is worth noting if you’re using resources to travel to a place where the bus is going to be because they will take around 3 days to get them to you. It may be quicker to just order them online in many cases as Women Help Women take around 5 days delivery. Both Women Help Women and Women on Web are reputable providers of early medical abortion pill. However we understand that Women Help Women is faster to respond to client emails. There is another reputable provider of pills, called Safe2Choose, but they are not currently sending pills to the Republic of Ireland.

Both Women Help Women and Women on Web will ask you for a Northern Irish address in addition to your home address, or the address of the place you will be receiving the pills. If you do not have a friend in Northern Ireland, fill out the medical consultation and WHW or WOW will follow up with you.

Please do not attempt an abortion with any other remedy, herbal or otherwise, as you could inflict serious injury on yourself. While Women on Web and Women Help Women are trusted providers of the abortion pill, there is always a risk when buying medicine online when it comes from a source that isn’t trusted.

A safe place to have your abortion

Once you’ve got your pills, you’ll need a safe space to take them. Most people will do that at home but for some that won’t be an option so they might go to a trusted friend’s house. Need Abortion Ireland’s site provides useful advice and self-care tips for when you’re having your abortion. They also provide care packages and a text message support service 089 490 2517 available 6pm – 9pm, 7 days a week. You can email them at info@needabortionireland.org The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) also provide a hotline for those living in Ireland with medical questions/concerns about medical abortion pills. BPAS can be reached at 1800 910 049 (ROI) and 0800 077 6049 (NI). Here are some tips on what to do if you think you’re in an emergency medical situation.

Increasingly, there appears to be a clampdown in the North on women taking the abortion pill, and a tendency towards prosecutions. Two prosecutions have been brought because someone touted on their housemate, and another two were reported by doctors. You are legally allowed to travel (if your immigration status is regularised) so telling your doctor you’re pregnant, or having them perform a pregnancy test should not be an issue. You do not have to tell them that you intend to have an abortion.

The Money

Figuring out how to pay for it, whether it’s the €80 donation for Women Help Women or €450 to a clinic and another €300 for flights, can be the most traumatic aspect of this experience for many women. If you are purchasing pills from Women Help Women or Women on Web and do not have the full requested donation, they may be willing to accept a smaller donation amount. If you’re later on in the pregnancy, or decide to travel to England, your procedure will cost more. The Abortion Support Network can help you with this but you may not wish to ask for that assistance. If you’re low on phone credit, you can request a call-back from the abortion clinics. Here is a list of clinics.

Many women take loans from their local Credit Union to fund their abortion. Generally speaking, they will let you borrow twice what you have in savings if a guarantor will sign for it. If you don’t have someone who can act as guarantor, you may need to get a student loan in a bank, or check if you can activate an overdraft facility on your account. Each credit union has different rules so it’s best to ask the branch you’re a member of. If you are in receipt of a social welfare payment you might be eligible to join and borrow from your local credit union through the Personal Microfinance Scheme. This was a government scheme introduced to try and stop people going to illegal money lenders. Try to avoid going to the illegal moneylenders at all costs. You could also go to the Community Welfare Officer to ask for an emergency payment. Keep in mind though that you will need to provide a reason why you need this payment, and if you say it is for a washing machine there is a chance you will need to either provide proof you purchased a washing machine or an inspector may call to check your purchase. You could take a chance and tell the CWO why you need the payment as they have a wide range of discretion but you do run the risk of going to a CWO who is antichoice and won’t give you the payment.

Other women have sold items on ebay to fund their terminations, or borrowed smaller amounts from various siblings or friends. You might have some coins in an old jar that you can put towards it. Maybe you have a fiver in an old coat. Or a €20 left in an old Post Office account. Withdraw it. Depending on your circumstances and ability to travel, you could be looking at paying anything between €450 and €2,500 to travel overseas to have a termination. Remember that the Abortion Support Network can give advice on the least expensive way to arrange your abortion and travel in addition to providing financial assistance to those who can’t afford to travel.

The medical abortion (abortion pill) costs less if you’re ordering it online, around €80, but you can only do this up to 10 weeks gestation. Surgical abortions will cost more but it will be cheaper if you do it without anaesthetic. Abortion is available in Britain on a broad range of grounds up until 24 weeks gestation. After 24 weeks, abortion is only permitted in Britain to save a woman’s life or prevent serious permanent harm to her physical and mental health; or where a child is likely to be born with a serious physical or mental disability. The later the gestation, the more expensive the procedure. Irish women usually have later abortions because it takes them longer to get the money together to travel.

If you’re reading this and not pregnant, start putting money away in a rainy day fund now. Open a credit union account if you can.

bpas

BPAS price list for those travelling from Ireland – April 2017

plane

Travelling for your abortion

Skyscanner is useful for checking for the cheapest flights. Make sure you liaise with your clinic first so that they have an appointment time available to suit you and with ASN beforehand if you’re getting financial assistance. If you have any serious medical conditions or are later along or have a particularly high BMI, that clinic may not be able to perform the exact procedure and may need you to go to a different clinic, so make sure you’re giving them accurate information so that you can have your procedure the day you travel. Also, book your appointment before your flights because it will be easier for them to adjust your appointment time if necessary than it will be for you to change your flights if needed.

If you fly over, you will need a passport for Ryanair so budget for that. Aer Lingus will take a number of different photo id’s including a work id with your photo on, a student id or a social welfare id if you’re travelling to Britain. If you can’t get an appointment in the UK and are travelling with Aer Lingus or another airline to somewhere else in Europe, you will need a passport. You can apply for a passport here and it costs €80.

Once you get there, if you’re travelling to a BPAS clinic, they have an excellent series of PDFs that show you the transport links to clinics from the airport nearest you. NUPAS also have a free courtesy taxi service. If you’re travelling to a Marie Stopes clinic, they have a free taxi pick up service for their clients coming from Ireland. When you make your appointment, the clinic will give you directions on how to get there via public transport anyway.

Outside the clinic

When you get to the clinic, there may be protesters outside. Protesters tend to stay at larger clinics but they aren’t allowed on premises so if there’s a car park outside and you arrive by taxi, you won’t have to deal with that. This can be distressing for women but this link provides useful information. Just remember, you aren’t doing anything wrong. Don’t engage with them. Just keep walking. If you’re very concerned about it, call the clinic and explain this to them and someone will escort you in.

Inside the abortion clinic

When you get inside, don’t be alarmed by the fact there are other Irish women there. They are all there for the same reason as you. You will never see them again.

Information on the abortion treatment and procedures is available here.

The length of time you’ll be at the clinic depends on the type of procedure you’re having but it will be anything from 3 hours to an overnight stay. For example, if you’re having a surgical abortion up to 14 weeks it takes around 15 minutes with an hour of recovery time. If you’re having the abortion pill and you’re under 9 weeks you can take both tablets in one go, but over 9 weeks and you’ll have to take one tablet and then come back in 1-3 days (this is why having an accurate knowledge of gestation is so important), and of course staying longer will increase the cost of your stay in Britain. 10-14 women travel to Britain every day from Ireland for abortions and most of these go over and back on the same day.

Consider when you’re paying if you want to do it by cash or debit card. Most clinics won’t have the name of the clinic show up on the card but you can check with them in advance in case you’re concerned. Depending on the exchange rate that day, it could be cheaper for you to pay in cash with sterling.

If you need accommodation, the clinic you attend can probably send a list of reasonably priced B&Bs if you ask them. If you can’t afford accommodation, contact Abortion Support Network. Abortion Support Network do not provide accommodation for women having Early Medical Abortions.

If you need to account for being away for a day or two, you can say you were just going on holiday or that you had a job interview. Try to keep things simple. Remember that there is no shame in your abortion, you have done nothing wrong – regardless of whether you choose to tell people or not. If you would usually bring your Aunty Pat a fridge magnet from your holiday, and you’ve told her you’ve gone on holiday, try and do the same this time.

Travelling for abortion after 24 weeks

If you need an abortion after 24 weeks because of a serious foetal condition, you may have to go to a specialist clinic for this. There are a few hospitals England that will provide the necessary treatment but you may have to wait a few weeks for an appointment. Depending on the stage of pregnancy and your medical requirements, the procedure may differ so it is best to speak directly to the hospital about the costs. In some late term abortions, the procedure is that the foetal heart is stopped and then the foetus is subsequently delivered. What some women have found in Ireland is that it costs around €1,500 for the first part and another €1,500 for the delivery so they opt to travel the first part done in Britain, and then return home to deliver the foetus in an Irish hospital where they have the support of their family. This also removes the cost of transporting foetal remains home to Ireland for burial. Some women simply prefer this option. Please do not be alarmed by these figures. Liverpool Women’s charges around £1634 for the whole procedure including the stay at hospital with your partner and it really depends on your particular needs.

If your pregnancy has been diagnosed with a fatal foetal anomaly, you are not alone. You can contact AnteNatal Results and Choices (ARC), a UK charity helping people understand their diagnosis and providing information. You can also contact Termination For Medical Reasons, a group in the Republic of Ireland made of women and couples who have made the trip to England to terminate pregnancies for medical reasons. They have a support group called Leanbh Mo Chroi – 086 3745474 or leanbhmochroi@gmail.com.

If you are in care….

If you are in residential or foster care, you have the right to travel to access abortion services. Contact your social worker to make these arrangements for you. Be aware, that in many cases where young people in care have attempted to seek abortions overseas, they have had to go through psychiatric assessments with the HSE and there have been court hearings.

If you need a visa to travel…..

If you are an asylum seeker, there is provision for you to get travel documents to access abortion overseas but it is an arduous process. You solicitor can also seek funds from the HSE via court order to assist you with the cost of travelling. You can contact the IFPA for more information on getting the assistance to travel from the HSE. As outlined here, you will need two visas, one to leave Ireland and one to make sure you get back in. If English is not your first language, let them know when you are booking your appointment, in many cases, a translator can be provided.

If you are a migrant or a refugee the best places to go if you need a visa to travel are:

MRCI Migrants Rights Centre Ireland http://www.mrci.ie (01) 889 7570

IRC Irish Refugee Council www.irishrefugeecouncil.ie (01) 764 5854

The MRCI and IRC share a Dublin office.

Depending on what country you are from, it may be easier for you to get a visa for The Netherlands or Belgium.

A legal abortion in Ireland?

If there is a real and substantial risk to your life, including a risk of suicide, you may be entitled to an abortion in Ireland. This is not guaranteed. In the Ms. Y case, the young woman was suicidal but was ultimately coerced under threat of legal action to undergo a c-section at 24 weeks despite being deemed suicidal. We are aware of another case where a suicidal woman was granted an abortion though, but there are too few cases at the moment to predict how applications will be treated. If there is a risk to your life because you are suicidal as a result of your pregnancy and want to seek treatment in Ireland, speak to your GP. It may be best to make alternative plans to travel simultaneously in case your request for a termination is denied. If you are suicidal, there is a list of contacts that may be of assistance to you here.

After your abortion

When you return, you should attend for a post-abortion check up with your GP or with the IFPA or a Well Woman Clinic. Post-abortion check-ups are free as they are state funded. Post-abortion counselling is also free. A list of clinics where you can access non-judgmental counselling is here. From a doctor’s point of view, a medical abortion (an abortion using the pill) is indistinguishable from a miscarriage. You don’t have to tell your doctor about it, but there’s some useful information here and here that may help you make that decision. Be aware that if you tell your doctor you took the abortion pill illegally in Ireland, there is a chance they may report you to the authorities. Your doctor is not legally obliged to report you in the South, but doctors are legally obliged to report you in the north. It may be worthwhile travelling to access post-abortion care from a provider you know will not report you.

Take it easy. Consider your future contraceptive needs. Talk to a friend or a professional if you feel you need to but don’t feel you have to. It can be a big emotional deal even when you’re 100% confident you made the right decision. So most of all, be kind to yourself.

takecare

Budgeting for your abortion overseas – A Feminist Ire Cut Out & Keep Guide

	Cost
Pregnancy tests	€
GP Visit	€
Phone credit for making calls to clinic / booking flights	€
Passport or ID Cost	€
Cost of travel documents or solicitor consultations to get them	€
Dating scan (optional)	€
Getting to ferry or airport (bus or taxi fare) or alternatively, airport parking plus petrol costs	€
Plane or ferry ticket cost	€
Plane or ferry cost for partner or friend accompanying	€
Phone credit for journey	€
Cost of printing documents (boarding pass, utility bill etc).	€
Accommodation	€
Fee for Abortion Treatment	€
Cost of Contraception	€
Food	€
Painkillers	€
Sanitary towels	€
Travel from clinic to airport	€
Travel from airport to home	€
Childcare fees	€
Miscellaneous	€
TOTAL	€

@stephie08

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Posted in Abortion, feminism, gender, Harm reduction, Health, rough guide to Ireland and tagged abortion, Abortion in the Republic of Ireland, health, human rights, Ireland, women. Bookmark the permalink.

Speaking ill of the living to spare the dead

Posted on March 1, 2017 by Stephanie Lord

Peter Mathews was a former Fine Gael TD who was known for waving rosary beads around their parliamentary party meetings and for famously declaring in response to being asked a question regarding whether women should be forced to carry life-threatening pregnancies to term with the phrase “Sure we’re all going to end up dead anyway.”

He also once declared that the decision to allow a 14 year old rape victim an early stage abortion as in the X Case as being “repugnant” and on occasion said it would be better lock women up, if that was what it took, to stop them having an abortion.

When news of his death emerged yesterday, many people wryly commented that at least Peter was right about one thing, we would all end up dead anyway. In response of course, men on the internet, defenders of the hurt feelings of a dead man, came out in their droves to tell women who used his literal own words that they were “scum” for doing so. Indeed, the fact that I had pointed out the irony of being reminded that the feelings of a dead man are important than the actual lives of the women who Peter Mathews would have preferred dead or in jail for want of an abortion, I attracted tweets from men to tell me I was “thick” for doing so.

Others were more measured in their replies to women remarking on Mathews’ death saying that their emotional responses to his death would result in less support for the pro-choice argument despite it being highly unlikely that a person who doesn’t think a woman deserves basic bodily autonomy is going to change their mind based on whether they think a woman’s reply is polite enough.

The mantra “do not speak ill of the dead” was taken to heart by many yesterday. Ordinarily most people would probably agree, but Peter Mathews was not an ordinary person. He was a former public representative who was elected to the Dáil, who on multiple occasions had an audience to which he could pontificate on the value of my life as a woman. He spoke at length throughout the debates on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill debates during 2013 in which he advocated a position that, despite his protestations otherwise, would result in women dying for want of legal abortions. The only reason that Bill ever saw the light of day in a Dáil chamber was because a woman died. Peter Mathews had a hand in formulating the State’s legislative response to the right of bodily autonomy of every woman in Ireland. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that no woman of childbearing age has had a vote on the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. My own mother was not old enough to vote when that referendum was passed.

Although politically marginalised by the end of his electoral career, he had a platform and influence and power over the lives of those who are actually marginalised; the women who he would round up and jail for having abortions; the women who he believed would be better off dead than having an abortion because “sure we all end up dead anyway.” There is no value in tone-policing the reactions of those women who Peter Mathews did not recognise the basic humanity of. The only value in it is for those who need very little excuse to have a pop at them anyway.

Of course, no one is arguing that pointing out Mathews’ comments that women should be forcibly prevented from having abortions should be the thing shouted at his grieving family, but we are not his grieving family. That said, unlike the majority of men rushing to berate me and others for even the mildest of comments on Mathews’ death, I actually did know him – at least in passing. He was a remarkably affable man who wouldn’t pass you without saying hello. I remembered on one occasion in 2014, I walked past him and said hello and he said “It’s a lovely day, isnt’ it?” It was a lovely day and it took every fibre of my being not to reply “Yeah but sure we’re all going to end up dead anyway.” In the end I said, “yes it’s lovely” and smiled and kept walking.

The thing was, no matter how gentlemanly and courteous he was, every time I passed him in real life and said hello, I was presented with a physical reminder that my life, in the eyes of this man who was an elected legislator, should not be saved if I had a medical condition that required an abortion. When I passed him and he remarked upon the rain, I thought of the women I know who he would let die rather than have abortions. When he smiled and asked “how are you?” to whoever he was passing, I would think of the women he would jail for having abortions. I would think of X, of A,B,C, of Ms. Y, Miss D, of Savita, or a woman who was clinically dead but kept on life support because people like Peter Mathews believed a foetus was equal to a born woman. Now that he has passed away, it is bizarre that there appears to be some unwritten code that says the only valid reaction is to narrate how polite he was and his work in relation to banking issues.

The criticisms of women who point out what Peter Mathews himself went to great lengths to talk about during his life is important for anti-choice activists and their supporters because it enables them to paint anyone who takes issue with what he believed in, and by extension their own beliefs, as being uncaring, heartless witches, or “thick” and “scum,” depending on the your preference. It serves to undermine the views of those who thought that Mathews was very wrong to dismiss the death of a pregnant woman with “sure we all end up dead anyway.”

There is something grotesque about a society that expects women to listen to male political figures pretend they know better for their bodies than they do themselves and pontificate on their potential death or jailing, and then further expects them to remain silent when one of those political figures passes. Their death does not magic away the impact of their actions when they were alive.

Those who are anti-choice and berating the rest of us might like for us not to speak ill of the dead, but seeing as they agreed with Mathews views and mostly people are just stating Mathews’ own words, it is odd that it is considered speaking ill at all. They can’t have it both ways, but even if it is speaking ill, it brings to mind Hired Knaves comments following another death, “A generation ago in Ireland it was customary not to speak ill of the dead but it was deemed fair enough to bury them in unmarked graves and tell their mothers that they were in limbo. Or hell, if the dead had killed themselves.”

The objective of criticising women for speaking out about Mathews’ comments is to silence them. It is not about politeness or his family or respect for the dead. Most of us do not have the luxury of standing up in the Dáil chamber to debate philosophical points regarding the bodily autonomy of others in a disconnected, dispassionate manner. We don’t have the platform to move seamlessly from discussing whether women should have abortions or not to how we knew Hugh O’Flaherty because we’d met him at rugby match or at tennis clubs, or make bizarre comments connecting abortion rates in France being somehow related to French women being given the vote. Most of the women affected by the Eighth Amendment aren’t shooting the breeze in the tennis club with the judges who decide what letters we’ll be known by in the High Court cases concerning our wombs.

Instead, we live with the prospect of being denied medical care if something goes wrong in our pregnancies. We live with the Eighth Amendment being used as an excuse to keep us alive even though we are clinically dead because women in Ireland are viewed as little more than vessels. We live with the prospect that a hospital will let us die if the risk to our life is not deemed “substantial” enough to warrant an abortion at that time. The ruaille buaille of the middle aged, middle class misogynists in Dáil and Seanad chambers is a sport to its participants as the outcome has little impact on their own lives. Meanwhile men scream at the people who are against forced pregnancies that they should have manners and then tweet at their employers and co-workers to flag up the audacity of being a woman with an opinion.

It is not the responsibility of marginalised people and those who are denied bodily autonomy to respect the opinions and words of those who made it so. We are not obliged to be kind to people who would lock us up for deciding we do not want to continue a pregnancy, whether they are living or dead. We are not obliged to be mindful of the feelings of a man who thought that the feelings of a woman who stated she would take her own life if she had to continue her pregnancy were irrelevant.

A society that respects a dead man, more than it does a living woman, is a society that is in itself, morally bankrupt, and those who defend the customs of such a society deserve no respect at all.

We all end up dead anyway, and personally I’d rather have that respect when I am alive.

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Posted in Abortion, gender, Politics and tagged abortion, gender, Ireland. Bookmark the permalink.

Ungovernable Wombs – The Abortion Pill and the Erosion of the Eighth Amendment

Posted on October 17, 2016 by Stephanie Lord

Between 2010 and 2015 the rates of women travelling from Ireland to access abortion services in the UK fell from 4,402 per annum to 3,451 per annum. A total of 27,800 women travelled during this timeframe. Anti-choice groups congratulated themselves because of the drop in numbers, choosing to interpret the British Department of Health statistics as evidence of a drop in the rate of abortions taking place as a result of their work. Pro-choice groups were at pains to point out that this was incorrect; the British DOH stats simply show the decline in the numbers of women travelling from Ireland who access abortions in England in Wales, but they do not represent the total numbers of women from Ireland who are accessing abortions. The 27,800 figure was *never* accurate; it doesn’t include women who travelled from Ireland but gave UK addresses or in some cases used UK NHS numbers. It doesn’t include migrant women who travel to Eastern European states to access services there. It doesn’t include women who travel to other EU states that aren’t the UK to access abortion services there instead.

So the paper published today shows that during the period which *official* numbers travelling to the UK declined by 951, there were 5,680 women who requested the abortion pill to take at home within the island of Ireland from an organisation called Women on Web. The numbers willing to risk a criminal penalty to have an abortion at home are increasing year on year. That said, given that customs seize some of these packages, we don’t know how many made it through to the women who requested them or how many women actually took the medication once they managed to get them. But even if only 50% of women managed to get the abortion and actually take them, it pretty much cancels out the reduction of numbers women travelling to the UK for terminations. Fifty percent is actually a remarkably conservative estimate considering that Customs only managed to seize 68 of these tablets last year, and given that there are more websites than Women on Web who will provide the drug (including Women Help Women) and migrant communities who have their own word of mouth suppliers as well as less reputable black market suppliers online, it’s quite likely that there are a few thousand more who have requested and taken the abortion pill since 2010.

It’s good to see coverage of this issue, and specifically of Rebecca Gomperts’ research paper but it doesn’t tell the whole story about women who are willing to risk a prison sentence (such as the woman in the north who took pills and was subsequently reported to the police by her tout housemates). The pill was supplied by Women on Web to 1,642 women between 2010 and 2012 and they managed to conduct follow-up research on 1,181 of those women (72%).

What report does tell us is that the law that criminalises abortion north and south in Ireland, and allows the state to jail women if they breach it, is completely irrelevant to women who need to access terminations and can’t travel. They are going to take the risk and order the medication anyway. The women who accessed the abortion pill from Women on Web were generally between 20 and 30 years old and the majority of them were already mothers, and 97% of them reported that accessing and using the medication at home was the right thing for them with 98% saying that they’d recommend the experience to other women. The only negative thing for the women accessing abortions at home is doing it outside of the law.

While the Citizens Assembly pontificates on the rights of women in Ireland to bodily autonomy and control over their reproductive systems, women can and will break the law in order to end their pregnancies. The abortion pill is a safe drug, in fact, it’s safer than viagra, and while well-meaning obstetricians like to point out the risks of taking medicines without the supervision of a medical practitioner, it isn’t unreasonable to suggest that in an Irish context, those concerns are as much about women in Ireland challenging the State’s control over their bodies as they are about taking a safe dose of misoprostol following an online consultation with a medical professional overseas. Continuing the prohibition against abortion and forcing women to go to term with pregnancies they do not want to carry is a form of structural violence against women.

The fact that women ordering this medication clearly believe it is safe should tell the State and the Citizens Assembly something. More and more women are now taking the pill and recommending it to their friends who can’t or simply don’t want to travel. Furthermore, even if women don’t believe it’s safe, they are willing to take that risk as well as the risk of arrest and prosecution in order to end their pregnancies at home here in Ireland. At this stage, for women in Ireland whether they travel or order medication online, abortion is a pretty normal event. It isn’t certainly isn’t a rarity. No one is put off ordering drugs whether they are risking a 14 year prison sentence or life in penal servitude, or their own health or life when it comes to disreputable black market sellers. Women on Web and Women Help Women alongside the activists who are supplying them with information, contact details, assisting them in getting the medication and providing them with safe spaces in which to take their medication are changing women’s health care in Ireland. Of course, this medication is only available for early terminations, but the power of it becoming more normalised and giving women control over their own bodies should not be underestimated.

Recognising that taking abortion out of the constitution and criminal law and treating it as a public health issue, is absolutely essential. This is about women’s rights and self-determination There are clearly public health consequences as a result of this domestic criminalisation – not every seller is as ethical as WoW or WHW. Forcing women to a point where they order medication online, though potentially empowering from a bodily autonomy standpoint, is pretty demeaning and dangerous in the context of a potential jail sentence if they are caught; if you thought your home abortion wasn’t going quite according to plan and you were unsure whether you were bleeding a bit too much, would you ask a doctor knowing they might feel obliged to call the Gardaí?

The Eighth Amendment might still be in the Constitution looming over everyone with a womb in Ireland, but like the women of generations past who handed down details of Queen Anne’s Lace seeds and Pennyroyal tea; email addresses and website details and safe houses to have packages delivered to are handed down by the current generation. If there is no safe house for delivery there might be a drone delivery. In all jurisdictions where abortion is illegal women will find a way around it regardless of criminal penalties. The existence of the internet makes a mockery of the 1995 Regulation of Information Act that tightly controls the circumstances under which you be given information about abortion; literally anyone with a smartphone could potentially tell you when, where and how much an abortion will cost. Whether you have the funds to access it is a different thing altogether. Even if you do have the funds, the ability to access it in a post-Brexit Britain is in question.

When the Eighth Amendment is repealed, it must not be replaced with a semi-liberalised system that allows for abortion in certain highly restricted circumstances that requires women to jump through bureaucratic hoops designed to degrade them by requiring the narration of their experiences for panels of doctors who decide whether their reason for wanting to end their pregnancy is good enough, or whether the risk to their health or life is risky enough. The treatment of Ms. Y during her engagement with the panel (that ordered the termination of her pregnancy by a c-section at 24 weeks rather than the abortion she requested at 9 weeks) has taught us that the State will not make owning your own body straightforward for women. The Eighth Amendment must be replaced by a system that allows for free, safe, and legal abortion where a woman decides it is best for her, in a venue that is convenient and accessible for her – whether that is in a clinic or in her home. Continued refusal to allow this to women will simply mean thousands more travelling every year and thousands more ordering abortion pills online.

The 1,642 women who received illegal abortion pills in Ireland between 2010 and 2012 are the tip of a very large iceberg that is not going away no matter what the Citizen’s Assembly decides.

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Posted in Abortion, feminism, gender, Health, Politics, Reproduction and tagged abortion, England, feminism, human rights, Ireland, women. Bookmark the permalink.

After #ge16, where to now for #Repealthe8th?

Posted on February 28, 2016 by Stephanie Lord

pro choice002

The results from count centres across the state are slowly trickling in as I write this, and Labour activists and supporters are shouting that #Repealthe8th is dead as quickly as their candidates are dropping out of the race. They need to stop.

I presume they genuinely believe what they’re saying, just as they believe that we wouldn’t have marriage equality were it not for the Labour Party, but peddling that view damages the pro-choice movement.

Labour might have been confident that they could deliver a referendum on the eighth amendment, but pro-choice activists of all political stripes and none haven’t forgotten that they delivered legislation on X to allow for abortion where a woman would be a risk of dying that contained a 14 year jail sentence penalty for inducing a miscarriage, and the horrifying case of teenage refugee pregnant as a result of rape enduring what was ostensibly a forced c-section at 25 weeks, despite medical professionals acknowledging that she was suicidal. The #Repealthe8th campaign exists in spite of Labour, not because of it. Perhaps Labour in government after #ge16 would have delivered a referendum, but what would that have looked like?

Besides, Labour aren’t in government now, and unless there’s some kind of divine intervention over the next twelve hours it doesn’t look like they will be. They had five years to work to hold a referendum and didn’t. We can acknowledge that Labour were in government when the Marriage Equality referendum happened but it was won because people mobilised and worked their rocks off to get it passed; People who were never involved in politics before came out alongside grassroots groups and got Ireland to a place where it said yes to valuing people as equals. So instead of throwing the toys out of the pram and acting all hard done by, Labour activists would do better to channel their energies into the pro-choice campaign and work for a repeal of these laws. There is nothing to be gained by trying to undermine the positivity of pro-choice campaigners by getting in a huff, throwing hands in the air and saying we should all just forget it now.

That said, it is difficult to ascertain just how much of a deciding factor abortion was in this general election given the number of Fianna Fail TDs that have been returned and their unwillingness to commit to a referendum – but there have been huge returns for independents and political parties who are very much in favour of holding a referendum. The people of Dublin Bay South waved goodbye to Lucinda Creighton, one of the most staunch anti-abortion voices in the Dáil and while this is to be welcomed, this is not a time for pro-choice activists to rest on our laurels. Clare Daly has championed reproductive justice and been returned to the Dáil alongside Joan Collins. Ruth Coppinger, Paul Murphy, Richard Boyd Barrett and Gino Kenny are all pro-choice. Sinn Féin have a policy in favour of repeal the eighth. There is a recognition, even amongst conservatives such as Leo Varadkar and Frances Fitzgerald that a referendum is inevitable. It is easier now to be pro-choice than it ever has been before and thanks to the work of pro-choice activists and an increase in public support, the stigma surrounding the subject is ebbing away. Now is the time to send a clear message to the returned members of the new Dáil that a commitment to repeal the eighth amendment must form a part of any new Programme for Government. Women must no longer be blocked from accessing appropriate healthcare. Public opinion on the need to repeal the law and provide legal abortion for women is far more progressive than what is represented in the Dáil now, even with the addition of the large range of socialist, republican and left of centre voices. This public opinion needs to be converted into action on the ground.

We must make no mistake, the anti-choice groups that are happy to see women die for want of medical care, will consolidate their efforts in order to keep the eighth amendment in place. They will continue with their bitter newspaper columns full of demonisation and blame, and their shaming billboards and they will continue their misrepresentation and campaigns of outright lies against people who provide women’s healthcare in Ireland. Their attacks on the IFPA and others are not about women’s healthcare, they are about muddying the waters so that they can portray themselves as being something other than religious fundamentalists who want to keep women in the dark ages. They have no intention of stopping so we have an onus to build our movement, to keep up the pressure no TDs and tell them in their clinics, in the streets, in the courts, and in their media streams that they must fight to repeal the eighth. We can’t only depend only on TDs to argue these points in the confines of the Dáil chamber; there is an onus on us to keep speaking to our families and friends to reduce the stigma, to help women accessing abortion care, to publicise information and to counter the outrageous propaganda and lies bandied about by anti-choice activists. We must organise and march in the streets and stand shoulder to shoulder with others campaigning for free, safe and legal abortion.

Pro-choice groups are ready for this fight. Are you?

#Repealthe8th

@stephie08

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Posted in Abortion, Equality, feminism, Health, Politics, Reproduction and tagged abortion, feminism, gender, Ireland, politics. Bookmark the permalink.

Breda O’Brien, clickbait and being devoid of empathy

Posted on September 19, 2015 by Stephanie Lord

Breda O’Brien has a regular, offensive clickbait column in the Irish Times where she gets paid actual money to peddle her narrow, bigoted view of the world that doesn’t tally in any way with actual evidence of what happens in real life. She goes to great lengths to portray women who’ve had abortions as being at best cold and indifferent about their experiences and at worst, callous, unless they are members of Women Hurt. For Breda, the only time it’s acceptable for a woman to talk about her experience of abortion, is if it is in the context of being a negative experience in your life. Ideally, the more torment connected to it, the better – because it will be the only time that your experience has any value at all. It doesn’t matter for her or even the Irish Times, that her stories are possibly not actually true, it just matters that some people will believe them. If you throw enough stones, eventually you’ll hit something. Today’s offering is no different.

O’Brien opens today’s drivel by saying that Irish women talk about their abortions all the time with her. Maybe there are women who talk to O’Brien about their experiences but she is hardly the most likely of people you would confide in;

“Breda, you are a well known anti-abortion activist so I need to tell you, I was raped at 14 and had an abortion at 6 weeks.”

“That choice was morally wrong and is exactly the same as drowning a three year old child. ”

“Um, thanks Breda. I’m glad I got that off my chest by talking to you.”

Given the exposure Tara Flynn and Roisin Ingle’s stories got in the Irish Times last week, it’s hard not to read O’Brien’s piece as a direct retaliation towards these courageous women. It’s basically an eight hundred word fuck-you to Roisin and Tara.

She also says that women have told her of going for post-abortion counselling in a pro-choice organisation only to be told, “you did what was right for you at the time. Put it behind you and move on.” But I find it a stretch that any pro-choice organisation would simply tell a woman “move on” after she said she found her experience difficult to deal with or that she had regrets. Because that is not how pro-choice people or organisations operate. That is a fiction. Unlike O’Brien, we recognise that women have different experiences while noting that the vast majority of women who have terminations do not regret them.

O’Brien says that these women feel dismissed and diminished, while not for a second noticing the irony that women who do *not* regret their decision are dismissed and diminished by O’Brien and her Iona cronies who are given a national media platform on which to do so. No person’s experience should be diminished, but the women who allegedly seek comfort from O’Brien should not be taken as representative of the sum total of women who have had terminations – just as the women who do not regret them are not the sum total, we merely note that they are the overwhelming majority. O’Brien goes to great lengths to couch her language in terms of pseudo comfort and “common humanity” and then denies to other women the capacity to make decisions for themselves believing that she knows better.

She decries those of us who speak of cells and the right to choose and implies that we are the same as Roman men who left babies to die on the side of a hill as we dehumanise the “victim.” At no point does it register with her how she dehumanises women who make the decision to abort without regret; women who terminated because of the suffering that continuing the pregnancy might bring, or the risk to their health or wellbeing, or because they were in a violent relationship, or because they simply did not want to be pregnant. If pro-choice feminists who advocate a woman’s right to choose are for O’Brien, like the Roman men who leave babies to die of exposure on the hillside then what does that make the women who actually choose to abort? This of course is the woman who is a spokesperson for the people that carry signs at their rallies saying “Abortion is Witchcraft” (forward to 2:52 of this video). Does that sound like empathy to you?

Anti-choice ideology ignores that fact that legal and medical structures that deprive a woman of full control over her own reproductive system condemn women to being second class citizens. O’Brien attempts to portray herself as being understanding, attempting to make us believe she empathises with women in crisis pregnancies by saying if she had become pregnant as a teenager, she is “not sure what (she) would have done.” Perhaps that’s true. She wouldn’t be the first woman to be against abortion until faced with a crisis pregnancy and had she accessed a termination, she certainly wouldn’t even be the first anti-choice woman to terminate and subsequently stand outside that very same clinic and denounce the women who enter it.

But you are not empathising with a woman in a crisis pregnancy when you actively campaign in favour of laws that compel women to endure a forced pregnancy, a court ordered c-section, and then tell us that she should have been made to carry that pregnancy to term. Being empathetic does not mean heaping judgment on women who had abortions and telling them their decisions was morally wrong. Since when did empathy extend to stigmatising and criminalising women and advocating that they go to jail? You cannot attest to empathise with women in crisis pregnancies when you deny them a choice in their medical care that will literally result in their death.

O’Brien also carefully adds a sentence about Aylan Kurdi so that there is to be no misunderstanding as to where she stands – comparing the drowned three year old to the terminated weeks old foetus. She could have written a column about how Europe should open its borders to the refugees, or about how Hungary is treating the thousands walking through their land, tired, cold, and hungry, searching for a better life. She could have even spoken about the reasons why women choose abortion and acknowledged that if you want less abortions, you need to make it easier for women to have children. That would be the logical thing, but this is not about logic, this is about curtailing women’s choices because Breda O’Brien views them as vessels and nothing more.

The majority of people in this state are pro-choice despite all of us of child-bearing age having never had our say on the Eighth Amendment. My own mother wasn’t even old enough to vote when the Eighth Amendment was passed. Prochoice activists acknowledge that abortion can often be a difficult decision for a woman. We also acknowledge that the decision to terminate can be a source of great relief to many. The difficulty for anti-choice activists is that they cannot contemplate, due to being completely devoid of empathy, why it would be a relief for many women and why not every woman struggles with it, so in order for them to understand it they must portray these women as uncaring monsters like the Roman patriarchs or of course, witches.

Anti-choice activists do not understand, much less care, that when a woman is pregnant, she is more than a receptacle to carry a foetus to term, with thoughts, feelings, financial pressures and very often, other children to take care of. Just as it would be wrong for a woman to be compelled to terminate against her wishes, it is wrong to compel her to carry a pregnancy against her wishes. Women are more than the contents of their wombs and their existence has more reason than bearing children, and if we want to talk about moral value, then we must acknowledge that an embryo does not have the same moral value as a living, breathing woman who bears it, simply because it has the potential to become a human being. The inability to empathise at the very core of anti-choice beliefs is the reason why there is a woman on trial in Belfast for supplying her daughter with abortion pills, and it is the reason that a woman who has an illegal abortion in this state will get 14 years in prison. Reducing a woman’s humanity and placing it on a par with a week old embryo is not empathy, it is stomach-churning fanaticism. Perhaps had O’Brien actually been faced with a crisis teenage pregnancy, she may believe that had she taken certain decisions that she should have faced 14 years in prison, although at that time it would have been a life sentence (presumably for her own good), but that is not empathy.

Believing that because you never had an abortion that nobody else should have one either is about as far away from empathy as you can possibly get.

#Repealthe8th

@stephie08

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Posted in Abortion, Equality, feminism, Health, Reproduction and tagged abortion, Abortion in the Republic of Ireland, anti-choice propaganda, Criminalisation, feminism, Feminist Ire, gender, Ireland, politics, prochoice, women. Bookmark the permalink.

A duty to reproduce: Modern Ireland is a sci-fi dystopia for women

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Stephanie Lord

In an episode of Battlestar Galactica called “The Farm”, Starbuck gets shot during a raid on Caprica and loses consciousness. She wakes up in a hospital, where it turns out that the cylons have a lot of human women hooked up to “baby-machines”, because they can’t reproduce themselves, so they’re trying to reproduce with humans. The human women are used as incubators and the cylons are of the view that they have a duty to reproduce. The cylon doctor tells Starbuck how women of reproductive age are very “precious commodities.” The agency of the individual does not matter – they are merely vessels. Vessels do not need to consent. The women hooked up to machines for the sole purpose of reproduction are, in this case, science fiction, and it’s pretty grim.

As I type this, there is a woman who is clinically brain dead but being kept alive on life support against her family’s wishes solely due to the fact that she is pregnant. The trauma that her family is going through now does not bear thinking about. I have lost a close family member in terrible circumstances, but I cannot imagine what it must be like to endure the heart-breaking pain of deciding to switch off a life-support machine. The trauma of it is surely enormous.

A next of kin is generally legally entitled to make a decision regarding treatment where a person can no longer consent. This family has concluded that the best course of action for this woman would be to withdraw life support. The medical staff cannot grant this request due to the constitutional right to life of the unborn: the right of an early stage foetus to be gestated potentially supersedes a woman’s right to dignity in death.

The state and the law of Ireland views women as vessels. In Ireland, once we are pregnant, we are no longer agents of ourselves. We do not get to decide whether we should or should not remain pregnant. Our thoughts, our feelings, our mental health does not matter. Our ability to parent does not matter. Our poverty does not matter. Our right to die a natural death does not matter. Our dignity does not matter. Our physical health does not matter, because you must be at risk of death to have an abortion. This is the outworking of the 8^th Amendment. The state is unapologetic in this. The only time in which a pregnancy may be ended lawfully through termination is when there is a risk to a pregnant person’s life. The life of the foetus is what matters: continuing the pregnancy at all costs is what matters. If a pregnant woman is deemed to be suicidal, and like Ms. Y, wants an abortion, the pregnancy will be ended not through termination, but by an early caesarean once it is viable. To the state, ultimately, we are simply wombs with irrelevant thoughts attached.

The woman on life support in Mullingar, due to being clinically brain dead after suffering brain trauma, is being treated as an incubator for her foetus. There are people arguing for her to be kept alive for months so that her foetus may be born, and then turn the life support off – for them, she serves no purpose beyond this pregnancy. Her family now intend going to court to ask, in the name of compassion and human dignity, that her life support machine be switched off. There is no predicting what the courts will decide.

Will Article 40.3.3’s requirement to vindicate “the right to life of the unborn” in so far as is practicable require doctors to keep a clinically dead woman alive artificially in order to incubate it until it can be delivered? It is the crux of the case. It isn’t clear what stage the pregnancy is at (Reports have varied from 16 weeks to 20 weeks, with Joan Burton stating during Leader’s Questions today that it is at a “relatively early” stage), but while the 8^th Amendment remains on the books every single case that presents such as this one will mean a trip to the courts for a family, because there will never be a clarity on what is practicable and what isn’t. Is one week practicable or twenty? You cannot legislate for every potential case.

We do not need another inquiry and report to tell us that the 8^th Amendment still leaves medical practitioners with a lack of clarity as to what to do in these situations, or to tell us there is lack of clarity on whether it’s the pregnant woman’s rights or that of the foetus that will prevail. Leaving a pregnant woman hooked up to a machine for the sole purpose of incubating a pregnancy for possibly twenty weeks, in the absence of her next of kin’s consent where she has no capacity, does not uphold her dignity. It does not uphold her right to die a natural death. It does not allow for her family to consent when she cannot. It is inhumane, but her womb is a “precious commodity.” They wouldn’t do it to a dog.

This is the constitutional law, and while the law is designed to treat women as vessels we will always have the hard cases that fall outside of the scope of legislation. We will have more women in desperate situations. More Savita’s, Ms. Y’s. More A’s, B’s and C’s. More Ms. D’s. More Ms. X’s, and more women hooked up to machines because the state does not afford them or their next of kin the capacity to consent for themselves because their wombs are too precious a commodity to risk allowing them control over. This isn’t science fiction, for women, modern Ireland is dystopia enough, and there is no need for machine overlords, while catholic conservative values dominate policy on this issue.

#Repealthe8th

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Posted in Abortion, Equality, feminism, Health, Politics, Reproduction and tagged abortion, Abortion in the Republic of Ireland, feminism. Bookmark the permalink.

To them, we are nothing but vessels

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Stephanie Lord

A young non-Irish woman with limited English and precarious residency status, discovered she was eight weeks pregnant as a result of what the Sunday Times have reported as a “traumatic rape.” Due to her legal status in Ireland she could not freely travel abroad in order to access an abortion so immediately applied to have a termination in Ireland under the new legislation, stating that she was suicidal at the prospect of carrying the foetus to term. Like Savita Halappanavar and Bimbo Onanuga, she is another woman from outside of Ireland who has been completely failed by the Irish medical system.

Three doctors declared that the woman was suicidal under the panel formed under the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act in January. The legislation states that medical practitioners may authorise an abortion where “there is a real and substantial risk of loss of the pregnant woman’s life from a physical illness or by way of suicide” but they must have “regard to the need to preserve unborn human life as far as practicable.” The Act does not set out timelines during which decisions should be made by these panels, or when abortions should be performed if granted under this law. To insert a timeline in that law, giving the applicant some clarity, would have been too generous a gift for the women of Ireland by the Irish government. The panel of three doctors said that despite the fact she was suicidal, it would be better to wait until the foetus was viable for delivery instead of performing an abortion. She went on hunger and liquid strike in response. People do not enter in to hunger strike lightly; It is a last resort attempt by people seeking redress when the politics of despair have left them with nothing else to fight with but their own bodies.

The HSE in turn, sought an emergency order at the High Court on the 2nd of August which would allow it to forcibly hydrate the woman on the grounds that they wanted to protect her life and the life of the foetus which she did not wish to carry. It further sought orders that would allow them to carry out other procedures related to her pregnancy. The woman was represented by her lawyers, and the foetus was also represented by its own legal team. The Irish courts have already stated that it is a medical practitioner who is entitled to make decisions concerning the pregnancy, and not the woman herself. The law goes far beyond preventing a pregnant woman from having an abortion in circumstances where her life is not at risk. The Irish law is designed so that a person who is pregnant no longer has any say over what happens their body whether it concerns continuing the pregnancy itself, the location in which you wish to give birth or whether you will hydrate yourself or not.

Last month in Geneva, the chair of the UN Human Rights Committee said that Irish law on abortion treats women as a “vessel and nothing more.” Once you are pregnant in Ireland, you become property of the state and your own wishes are irrelevant.

On the 3rd of August, this young, suicidal rape victim, having gone through two court hearings seeking an abortion and an unknown number of medical interrogations by a panel of three doctors, underwent a caesarean section in an Irish hospital at approximately 24-26 weeks gestation. Preserving human life as far as practicable in their eyes required performing a c-section on a woman while she was around six months pregnant, despite the fact that she had been raped, was suicidal, had gone on hunger and thirst strike and had asked for an abortion repeatedly from eight weeks on.

The implications of this are horrifying. It has sent a clear message to women in Ireland that if you are suicidal and seek an abortion which you are constitutionally entitled to, you run the risk of medical practitioners compelling you to wait until the foetus is viable and then having a c-section forcibly performed on you. This woman was in a very vulnerable position given the multiple traumas she had endured. It is the stuff of nightmares. There are other women who are suicidal as a result of pregnancy and access abortion services because they have the means and support to travel. Some contact Women on Web and some contract the Abortion Support Network. Some will borrow money from friends. Those who don’t have internet or phone access to make appointments or ability to leave the country, or money to pay, and will take other steps. Some will borrow from money-lenders, others might throw themselves down stairs. But those who are pregnant and suicidal will not go to these panels, the risk is too great.

We do not know the full facts of this particular case because the media are restricted from reporting in full. However, we do know that the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act has not resolved the issue of not being able to access an abortion even if you are suicidal in Ireland. Three doctors said this woman was suicidal, but apparently this was not the right kind of suicidal for the purposes of the Act, and because a c-section was available then she could have that instead of a lawful termination.

It begs the question of what type of ‘suicidal’ will allow you to have a legal abortion in this jurisdiction and as long as the Eighth Amendment remains in the Constitution, there will be women travelling, dying and undergoing forced c-sections for want of an abortion within Ireland. There is no clarity as to what the scope of “practicable” actions are in order to prevent a woman from having an abortion under the cloak of “protecting the life of the unborn.”

Years ago, I had a conversation on facebook with someone who was anti-choice and was quite forthright in his views that women should be prevented from having abortions at all costs, even if they were suicidal and it required locking them up in specially designed pregnancy gulags under 24 hour suicide watch. It is a frightening vista but not totally unrealistic. Those on the anti-choice side will of course say the term “gulag” is hysterical, but if you were a pregnant suicidal rape victim, who wanted an abortion, and was in hospital on a court-ordered drip having an effectively forced c-section under threat of a court order, faced with the prospect of a 14 year jail sentence if you induce your own miscarriage, it just might feel pretty gulag-esque. You just might even etch “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” on a wall.

To them, we are nothing but vessels.

Repeal the 8th.

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Posted in Abortion, Equality, feminism, Health, Reproduction and tagged abortion, feminism, Ireland, savita. Bookmark the permalink.

Men of the Left think they’re different: Abortion and the Anti-Austerity Alliance

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Stephanie Lord

The amazing women’s rights and anti-capitalist activist Selma James spoke at the Anarchist Bookfair in Dublin this weekend. Bualadh bos to the WSM for getting her over. She gave inspiring talks on a range of issues, and during her contribution on Care, Social Reproduction and Austerity the conversation flowed towards the reality of activism that women’s issues are often side-lined by the left and seen as not important enough to pay attention to or campaign on.

Selma’s comment that “Men of the left think they’re different because they’re of the left, but they’re not” was met with a lot of women nodding their heads in agreement in the audience, and a couple of men shifting in their seats looking a little uncomfortable. Presumably some of them were thinking the usual “Not all men are like that though!” that women on the left are compelled to listen to whenever any kind of discussion emerges on sexism on the left and what to do about it. The women activists gave each other knowing looks. It’s ridiculous that this is still something women on the left have to deal with, but we do, and the results of that mind-set range from the irritating to the absolute enraging.

One such example of more enraging is the emergence that the Socialist Party front group Anti-Austerity Alliance’s election candidate in Tullamore, Mr. Thomas Carty is completely and absolutely anti-choice on the issue of abortion. It’s unclear how forcing a woman to bring to term a pregnancy against her will is in line with an anti-austerity agenda so the AAA have some questions to answer.

Of course, this isn’t a new thing. The Socialist Party have in the past courted a candidate in Omagh, Johnny McLaughlin, who turned out to be anti-choice in a most hysterical manner, so they should be aware of the ramifications of this.

There are a few potential scenarios at play here:

a) The AAA sat down and asked Mr. Carty what his position was on abortion, and he lied and said he was pro-choice ( which is unlikely considering his anti-choice views are plastered all over facebook).

b) The AAA sat down and asked Mr. Carty what his position was on abortion and he said he was anti-choice and they viewed it as not being all that important because electoral opportunism requires bums on seats.

c) Nobody in the AAA asked what his view was on it because the idea that 4,500 women spending up to £2,000 each every year travelling for a medical procedure overseas never entered their heads as being relevant to an anti-austerity programme.

It’s more likely that this is incompetence rather than conspiracy, and option C would probably be the bookie’s favourite.

And if that is the case it’s more than fair to ask why did nobody in the AAA think that this was a relevant question? There are more anti-choice candidates than Thomas Carty in the AAA ranks, so now that it’s been raised what will they do about it? It would be difficult to see them retaining a candidate who had been vocally racist in the past so why is supporting an anti-woman policy being treated differently? And Mr. Carty’s belief that a position as a ‘Boob Adjuster’ would be the best job ever (what? And not an AAA councillor leading the r-r-r-revolution? Shock indeed.) which is probably quite telling of his views on women hasn’t even been touched upon.

This kind of attitude is something that you would expect from political organisations of the right. It is not unreasonable to expect more from those who not only style themselves as the vanguard of the left, but as advocates for women.

Two fairly prominent members of the Socialist Party in Dublin were asked what the story with this was earlier on today in a facebook thread. At the time of writing, this legitimate question has been met with silence.

When Peter Hadden of the Socialist Party was questioned on the Johnny McLaughlin debacle twelve years ago he replied;

“Abortion, while an important issue, is not a make or break question for our party.”

This attitude hasn’t changed and for many on the left, something that affects more than 50% of the population’s right to do what they want with their own bodies isn’t a make or break issue. You could be forgiven for asking what impact a policy has to have before it becomes a make or break issue. Perhaps something that affected a few more men?

Selma was right, men on the left think they are different, but they’re really not.

Edit to update at 20.46: A member of the SP who may or may not be a party spokesperson commented on the facebook thread mentioned above to state that Thomas Carty was never ratified as an AAA candidate saying that,”The fact stands that at the national meeting on Sunday in which his candidacy was being decided upon, that the national AAA meeting did not endorse his candidature for the reasons outlined. So no, he was never officially ratified as an AAA candidate. Incidentally, I am not an activist within the AAA myself. It’s an entity that’s broader than the Socialist Party, with two of the seven members of its steering committee, I think, being Socialist Party activists.”

Thomas Carty was listed as an AAA candidate on the official AAA website up to this afternoon but has since been removed. No official statement from the AAA has been issued as yet.

Edit to update 15th April: The AAA issued a statement late last night saying :

STATEMENT FROM THE STEERING GROUP OF THE ANTI-AUSTERITY ALLIANCE RE. THOMAS CARTY

14 April 2014

The national Steering Group of the Anti-Austerity Alliance would like to clarify that Thomas Carty, Tullamore, is not endorsed as an AAA candidate.

The Steering Group unanimously agreed today that Thomas has attitudes which wouldn’t be compatible with being a candidate for the AAA. The AAA is a progressive organisation which fights for the rights of both women and men; rejects divisions based on gender; and takes equal treatment of women seriously.

Thomas was put forward as a candidate by a grouping in Tullamore very recently and had not previously attended national AAA meetings. When issues were brought to the attention of the national AAA meeting yesterday, they were investigated by the steering group who unanimously agree that Thomas should not be endorsed as a candidate.

From the seven members of the steering group, Anti Austerity Alliance.

Still doesn’t explain how he ended up on their official website before that and with lovely funky AAA graphics all over his social media accounts with his face on them. Oh well.

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Posted in Abortion, Politics and tagged abortion, feminism, politics, reproduction. Bookmark the permalink.