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woman refused abortion - Mod Note in first post.
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I'm not sure if all the facts have come out on this yet, so perhaps someone can advise me if this has been addressed but when it was discovered she was pregnant (8 weeks) why was she not referred to a GP/Maternity hospital?
She was referred to the IFPA, presumably to give her information on how to get a termination or at least discuss her options but did doesn't seem to have happened.
I dont know what part of the county she is in but in Dublin when I had my pregnancy confirmed I was referred to a maternity hospital immediately to set up dating scan, decide whether I wanted to go public/private etc. If she was told she was pregnant upon entering the country why was she not referred to hospital. Surely if this had happened she would have had multiple opportunities to inform doctors that she was not capable of carrying the pregnancy to term and her case for an early termination on mental health grounds would have been put in motion.0 -
The best interests of the child would always be priority number one in legal discussions.But would the child not have the right to stay considering that his early birth was a consequence of Irish legislation? Not sure anyone can answer this yet, it's the first case of its kind, isn't it?
If the child's father or grandparents were to come forward to claim the child, and assuming the court thought it the best thing to do, they could release the child to them.
Otherwise it's a bit of a tricky case as the child's mother is presumably permitted to be here, in which case the child would be permitted to be here. But the child is not in her care. If we presume the HSE have been appointed as the legal guardian, then I also presume that would qualify the child to remain in the country, in much the same way as you would adopt a child from overseas.0 -
I'm not sure if all the facts have come out on this yet, so perhaps someone can advise me if this has been addressed but when it was discovered she was pregnant (8 weeks) why was she not referred to a GP/Maternity hospital?
That's the 64 million dollar question, the IFPA are refusing to answer.
The IFPA stated in their RTE interview that they can and do refer people to GP's, but refused to say why they did not do so in this case, at 8 weeks.
Her friend told her to go to a GP when she was at 16 weeks.
The HSE were not informed untill she was at 20 weeks.0 -
I'm not sure if all the facts have come out on this yet, so perhaps someone can advise me if this has been addressed but when it was discovered she was pregnant (8 weeks) why was she not referred to a GP/Maternity hospital?
She was referred to the IFPA, presumably to give her information on how to get a termination or at least discuss her options but did doesn't seem to have happened.
I dont know what part of the county she is in but in Dublin when I had my pregnancy confirmed I was referred to a maternity hospital immediately to set up dating scan, decide whether I wanted to go public/private etc. If she was told she was pregnant upon entering the country why was she not referred to hospital. Surely if this had happened she would have had multiple opportunities to inform doctors that she was not capable of carrying the pregnancy to term and her case for an early termination on mental health grounds would have been put in motion.
The system we have in this country we don't get referred to a hospital to start pre natal maternity care, we have to pick where and ring and book the appointment ourselves.
She didn't want maternity care, she didn't want to have a baby or give birth, why would she book in with a maternity hospital?0 -
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i think its incredible that someone would think that a parent should have a choice on whether they child comfort their child in their hour of need, there is no compassion in this thread, it is worrying that you dont even suggest that the child or potential child should have a say in this!
Don't be ridiculous.0 -
Ralphdejones wrote: »The IFPA stated in their RTE interview that they can and do refer people to GP's, but refused to say why they did not do so in this case, at 8 weeks.
You think they should be utterly unprofessional and break client confidentiality,
to satisfy your curiosity?0 -
I have read the article a few times now and can't see where it says her first language wasn't English..can someone quote it?0
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It could be something as simple as the following exchange:Ralphdejones wrote: »The IFPA stated in their RTE interview that they can and do refer people to GP's, but refused to say why they did not do so in this case, at 8 weeks.
"I think you should go see a doctor for your own benefit"
"I don't want to see a doctor!"
What do you then? You can't compel anyone to go to the doctor, and they don't want one, then you can't refer them to anyone.
But as said, the IFPA can't come out and say this because it's confidential information.0 -
The system we have in this country we don't get referred to a hospital to start pre natal maternity care, we have to pick where and ring and book the appointment ourselves.
She didn't want maternity care, she didn't want to have a baby or give birth, why would she book in with a maternity hospital?
That's a fair point, I just feel that this poor girl seems to have fallen through the cracks and am trying to figure out why, after seeing the IFPA, she wasn't given more support and assistance.0 -
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That's a fair point, I just feel that this poor girl seems to have fallen through the cracks and am trying to figure out why, after seeing the IFPA, she wasn't given more support and assistance.
All they can do is talk about the option and give you a piece of paper with the phone number for BPAS on it and tell you the aprox cost.
They can't arrange it, can't make phone calls and certainly can not fund travelling for an abortion.
There are no supports or services for women who can not travel due to lack of money or lack of legal paperwork, or lack of child care, who want an abortion. This is why there has been a rise of women ordering abortion pills on line and risking possibly 14 years in jail to use them to induce a medical miscarriage here in Ireland.
Between 50 to 70 euro usually covers the cost of the abortion pills, big difference between that and 800 to 1500.0 -
Ralphdejones wrote: »So how do we already know what she said to the IFPA ?
Go ask the journalists who reported what she said.0 -
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You do not know what impact an abortion would have had on the young woman's life; it is ignorant to behave as though you do. What I do know is that if someone forced me to go through a pregnancy which I did not want to have, I would be very negatively affected.
Before I get accused of being heartless, with empathy mode firmly switched off, I'm going to try to present some objective thoughts on a horrendous case, without resorting to the emotional language that has been, imho, overused throughout this thread. I have huge sympathy for the young woman and baby involved, but I'm going to deliberately put those aside for the moment, to make an attempt at a reasoned discussion.
No-one can say, with any degree of certainty, how severely the whole rape and pregnancy will have affected this young lady, psychologically.
There does appear to be a belief among the pro-choice posters (I'm not targeting you, specifically) - that an abortion at 8 weeks would have resolved the psychological issues she faced.
That is patently untrue.
The very fact that she was raped and became pregnant will undoubtedly have long-lasting effects. They are likely to be severe. They would still have been severe if she had an abortion at 8 weeks.
They will also be severe after a termination at 25 weeks. Those are objective, balanced evaluations of a very emotive case.
However, to suggest that an abortion, rather than a termination, at 25 weeks, would somehow have a better psychological outcome for the young woman, is totally illogical.
She will still have carried a baby for 25 weeks. She will not forget that, no matter how the prefnancy was terminated.
The only difference that an abortion would have made at that stage, would be to deny a baby, who was and is capable of feeling pain, at that stage, any chance of life, and cause an undoubtedly painful death.
This whole case is horrendous.
I genuinely feel for the poor woman. But I also feel for the baby.I must agree. The only ones stigmatising anyone are those branding traumatised young women as child killers.
The child has an 80% chance of having severe disabilities, and the mother may well be so traumatised by the entire ordeal of forced pregnancy and surgery that she still winds up committing suicide. How is that better than aborting a clump of cells at 8 weeks gestation?There is no child, just a foetus.
That is exactly the crux of the matter.
Those who are pro-choice regard the baby as a clump of cells.
Those who are pro-life regard it as a baby.
Personally, from the instant I have ever discovered I was pregnant, I always regarded the "foetus" as a baby. A human life, from conception, equally as important as mine.for the last time its not a child!!! do you think a woman who has a miscarriage has suffered the same degree of loss as a woman who loses a full term baby?
From personal experience - yes! For the reasons mentioned above.Funnyonion79 wrote: »Because
1. The child was the result of a horrific rape and was not wanted by the woman.
2. Now the woman will be mentally scarred for life because she was not only violated by the man who raped her, but also by the Irish state who agreed that she was suicidal but force fed her and forced her to have a c-section.
3. Now the child is fighting for life in a hospital and will grow up in the Irish care system - which, as we all know, is severely lacking - and no - adoption is probably not on the cards for this child.
4. The child that the woman wanted to abort to save herself from further mental trauma is now living and exists so the already mentally traumatised woman now has to overcome the fact that her child is alive somewhere and the guilt knowing she does not want to keep this child as it's a living reminder of the rape she wants to forget. An innocent living reminder, yes but one that the woman does not want anything to do with.
5. Now this child will grow up (if in fact, it even survives) and learn the circumstances of their conception and birth and have to live with the fact that their father was a rapist and their mother was forced to give birth to them and then subsequently rejected them.
This whole thing has been a total mess from start to finish and all of the above could've been avoided if the woman had been given a termination when she presented at 8 weeks. So yes, although the woman and the child are both living, they are living and will continue to live a hellish existence day in and day out so I think an aborted fetus at 8 weeks would've absolutely been a better outcome than the current one.
How do you know what the future holds for either of them?
What makes you so sure that a C-section will cause more regret than a premature labour? How do you know that she wouldn't come to regret having an abortion.? Some women go on to regret having an abortion. Some women don't.
For anyone to presume to know how she will feel in the future is nothing more than speculation.
It may, or may not be, speculation based on sincerely held beliefs. In some cases, it can be speculation based on personal experience.
But is is most certainly speculation, because every woman is different, and every woman will have different life experiences in the future, which will affect how they view life experiences to date.That poor, poor woman. I've just read the article now.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/they-said-they-could-not-do-an-abortion-i-said-you-can-leave-me-now-to-die-i-don-t-want-to-live-in-this-world-anymore-1.1901258?page=1
“They said it is okay because I was eight weeks and four days. After that day I hoped they were going to help me. I was shown documents that were filled in, and I understood that the process was under way.”
Over the following weeks, she says, she had a number of meetings at the IFPA and though the process seemed to be in train she was told some weeks later that the estimated cost of travelling to England, having the abortion and possible overnight accommodation could be over €1,500. An individual in the IFPA, she says, told her the State would not fund the costs.
“I said we’re getting too far, and she said, no, in England they carry out abortions up to 28 weeks . . . She said ‘that is not the problem. The problem is the money’. This was the final thing for me. I cried.
She says that by then she had decided to kill herself.
That night she returned to the place where she lived and attempted to take her own life but was interrupted.
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Asked if she has any friend to talk to about her situation, the young woman says she has not.
“No, I didn’t want people to know . . . For me this was shameful. In our culture if a girl gives birth to a child before marriage everything is finished. No one can respect you. As well as that, for me, with the rape, it was difficult.”
Her stomach is still sore, and “the scar will never go away”, she say, adding “it will always be a reminder”.
“Sometimes, when I feel the pain . . . I feel I have been left by everybody . . . I just wanted justice to be done. For me this is injustice.”
Exactly.
The poor, poor woman. The poor, poor baby.
I'd probaly be banned for life if I mention what my thoughts are on the rapist.
I do, however, have to admit that I don't understand how an abortion at 25 weeks would have been any better for her than a termination at 25 weeks.
Either way, she is never going to forget, poor woman.0 -
Ivana Bacik's piece from 2013 is chillingly apt
http://ijls.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/IJLS_Vol_3_Issue_3_Article_2_Bacik.pdfBacik wrote:At present, for many Irish women this is addressed through the availability of travel to Britain. But the needs of the most vulnerable women for whom travel can be very difficult – the young, the poor, or asylum-seekers – are not being met. The voices of these women are not heard in the debate on abortion – they have effectively been silenced under the present legal regime. These are women who face a double crisis; on top of their crisis pregnancy, they also face the added crisis involved in the practical, financial and emotional difficulties in making the journey to England0 -
Opinionated, you are missing the point that it is upto the woman involved to decide what her limits are.
Yes her cumulative experience is horrendous.
She believes it could have been lessened by an early abortion and the lack of this has compounded her distress.0 -
I do, however, have to admit that I don't understand how an abortion at 25 weeks would have been any better for her than a termination at 25 weeks.
Either way, she is never going to forget, poor woman.
I'm not sure it would have been, to be honest.
My rage here is directed at whoever was responsible for delaying action for so long in the first place.
She found out she was pregnant at 8 weeks and asked for an abortion - nothing was done.
She was suicidal at 16 weeks - nothing was done.
And at 25 weeks she had the baby delivered.
At any time between, this pregnancy should have been terminated.
Yes, the rape must have been traumatic. Yes, discovering she was pregnant must have been even more traumatic. And neither of these traumata would have been swept out of existance by an early termination, certainly not.
But at least she would not have had the additional trauma of the continuing unwanted pregnancy and the physical and mental stress of the c-section heaped on top of all the things she is trying to come to terms with.
Personally, I'm not going to speculate if an abortion at 25 weeks or the c-section at 25 weeks would have been more or less traumatic - but I can't even begin to imagine the hell this poor girl must have gone through in the 17 weeks between discovering she's pregnant and the termination.0 -
No-one can say, with any degree of certainty, how severely the whole rape and pregnancy will have affected this young lady, psychologically.
There does appear to be a belief among the pro-choice posters (I'm not targeting you, specifically) - that an abortion at 8 weeks would have resolved the psychological issues she faced.
That is patently untrue.
The very fact that she was raped and became pregnant will undoubtedly have long-lasting effects. They are likely to be severe. They would still have been severe if she had an abortion at 8 weeks.
The issue is that she asked for an abortion at 8 weeks. One of the key issues I have is that her view on the subject is being ignored.
When a woman is asking for an abortion, it certainly would be worth considering that this is what she wanted.
Most of the pro-life discussion focuses on emphasising the possibility that she wasn't qualified to know what she wants. People find it easier to come to term with their own decisions rather than issues visited upon them. I am not arguing that she would have been all funky after an 8 week abortion, but that she would have been starting from a position of regaining control over her life.
Instead, by questioning her right and qualification to take control over her life, it becomes far, far harder to deal with the issues arising out of what happened her.
You cannot with any certainty claim it is better for her not to have an abortion when she has asked for one that for her to have one. Women deserve agency over this decision and yet a lot of people seem to be most willing to claim they aren't qualified to make their own decisions if they are looking for an abortion. I don't see pro-choice advocates forcing people to have abortions when they don't want them. I see plenty of anti-choice advocates forcing people to have babies and pregnancies when they don't want it.
Is there some reason you're unwilling to accept the woman's view on this? Are you going to push the Ronan Mullen line of her being bewildered? What most people want is control over their lives. She didn't get it and when you advocate that her stated wish of an abortion at 8 weeks be disregarded, you are making it abundantly clear that you only consider her qualified to make a decision about her pregnancy if she continues it. If she doesn't, then you don't want to grant her that agency.
Once more - you have not responded to this - forcing people to be pregnant and have children when they want neither is hugely damaging. IN that respect, it would be sensible to allow them to make the decision.
If I am pregnant, it is not you who are qualified to decide what is best for me and my family.0 -
Ralphdejones wrote: »Why do you not want people to know all the details about this case ?
I do, but you keep asking questions here no one can answer, if you want those answers then you have to go talk to the journalists & editors who printed/published what they have.0 -
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She asked at 8 weeks and it is clear that she was blatantly intimidated and obstructed by the hospital, the specialists and the HSE in order to delay and delay and delay. It is an astonishing and appalling outrage, ending with a grievous assault on her body by the HSE.The issue is that she asked for an abortion at 8 weeks. One of the key issues I have is that her view on the subject is being ignored.
This is the crux of the matter.If I am pregnant, it is not you who are qualified to decide what is best for me and my family.
People who are anti abortion are not being intimidated to abort their pregnancies. No pro choice people are trying to force abortion decisions on any women or families.
However the anti abortion campaigners are forcing their own personal beliefs, mostly religious beliefs, on to everyone else and it is outrageous that we in this country are allowing this to happen.0 -
Nobody thinks that an abortion would have made everything better. It would, however have made things less bad, and it was what the woman herself wanted. Denying her request made her awful situation worse. Allowing her request would have given her the chance to begin her recovery process from her ordeal.No-one can say, with any degree of certainty, how severely the whole rape and pregnancy will have affected this young lady, psychologically.
There does appear to be a belief among the pro-choice posters (I'm not targeting you, specifically) - that an abortion at 8 weeks would have resolved the psychological issues she faced.
That is patently untrue.
The very fact that she was raped and became pregnant will undoubtedly have long-lasting effects. They are likely to be severe. They would still have been severe if she had an abortion at 8 weeks.
The waters are muddy on the issue of whether the pregnancy should have been aborted or whether the baby should have been delivered. The baby at this term is barely viable and as another poster described from her own experience of an extremely pre-mature delivery, the baby suffers enormously during the treatment required to keep it alive up until it leaves hospital. The humane thing might have been to abort the baby, especially if the baby develops with severe disabilities and is left in the ward of the state for it's whole life.However, to suggest that an abortion, rather than a termination, at 25 weeks, would somehow have a better psychological outcome for the young woman, is totally illogical.
She will still have carried a baby for 25 weeks. She will not forget that, no matter how the prefnancy was terminated.
If the delivery was later on in the pregnancy, then this argument shifts significantly towards delivery rather than abortion because the prognosis for the child is much more positive.
There are valid arguments on both side for whether the baby should have been delivered at such an early term.The only difference that an abortion would have made at that stage, would be to deny a baby, who was and is capable of feeling pain, at that stage, any chance of life, and cause an undoubtedly painful death.
You're right hereThis whole case is horrendous.
For this reason, nobody in their right mind would ever consider a policy of forcing women to have abortions. If you consider the foetus to be a human baby and want to carry it to term regardless of the situation, nobody should deny you that right. On the other hand, if you consider the foetus to not be a baby until it's more fully developed, then you should have the right to abort the pregnancy.That is exactly the crux of the matter.
Those who are pro-choice regard the baby as a clump of cells.
Those who are pro-life regard it as a baby.
Personally, from the instant I have ever discovered I was pregnant, I always regarded the "foetus" as a baby. A human life, from conception, equally as important as mine.
Objectively, we do know for a fact, that from the perspective of the foetus, the foetus does not exist up until the 23rd week at the very earliest. Before there are EEG brain waves, the foetus is not in any way sentient. Early term abortions/miscarriages are only harmful to women who want the baby.
Miscarriages are awful and my deepest sympathy to you for your lossFrom personal experience - yes! For the reasons mentioned above.
Nobody knows the future, but the woman should have the right make the decision for herself. She may later regret the decision, or she may not, but it's much better that she has the choice herself, than to be forced against her will to carry a baby that she does not want.How do you know what the future holds for either of them?
What makes you so sure that a C-section will cause more regret than a premature labour? How do you know that she wouldn't come to regret having an abortion.? Some women go on to regret having an abortion. Some women don't.
For anyone to presume to know how she will feel in the future is nothing more than speculation.
It may, or may not be, speculation based on sincerely held beliefs. In some cases, it can be speculation based on personal experience.
But is is most certainly speculation, because every woman is different, and every woman will have different life experiences in the future, which will affect how they view life experiences to date.0 -
What I find crazy is that we are *so* far out of line with all of our Northern European neighbours, including Britain, on this issue.
None of those countries are morally bankrupt, nor are they going around trying to encourage abortions.
It's an option that's there and often in a pretty restricted context beyond approx 20 weeks.
Ireland's official attitude of moral superiority is totally nonsensical. We're prepared to take some abstract religious notion about when life begins and impose it in law.
I would actually say there's a higher possibly of euthanasia being legalised here before abortion because people actually have a rational debate about that without the hysterical arguments that come up about abortion.
All we need in place is normal, senaible, probably quite restricted access to legal abortion.
There was someone one RTE yesterday going unchallenged saying that Labour was calling for abortion up to 9 months. That's the level of debate we are dealing with here.0 -
You do say it yourself though. She wanted an abortion on the grounds of being raped, yet unfortunately that is not a legal possibility in Ireland. I agree she probably felt like she was in limbo for the 16 weeks, no doubt confused about the whole thing, about her options, about what she was being told, and so forth.
But by her own words, she didn't present to the HSE as suicidal until 24 weeks.
I think that's the key thing to take from this.
She's the victim of a unnecessarily restrictive law, which for an immigrant new to the country would seem like an impenetrable tangle of legalities. But I'm not entirely sure what could have been done to help her, given the legal restrictions. Had she presented to anyone at 8 or 16 weeks as being suicidal, then it would have been a whole different ball game. Had she told the IFPA that she was suicidal, I'm sure they would have acted.
The legislation appears to work just fine, from a procedural point of view. It does exactly what it's supposed to do. However, what this case exposes is that the very women this legislation is supposed to protect are the ones least likely to understand how to navigate it.
I get the feeling though, that what with the language barrier, she fully trusted the IFPA to have things "going" for her, she does say that she had the forms filled in, she was told they were working on it. So in her mind, it probably all was going to be sorted, it was not going to happen/continue, there was hope... she probably didn't have a notion that the IFPA were different from the HSE. When faced with the crude fact that she couldn't travel for the abortion, she became suicidal : at that stage it must have felt like there was no way out of the pregnancy.
One thing led to the other, the delay and subsequent shocking news that the abortion was not going to happen must have hit her like a ton of bricks.
I wouldn't cast doubts over the fact she became suicidal as the situation and the hope of resolving it faded.
So like a lot of situations it seems in the Irish medical system, it has to be let escalate to the point of no return for some action to be taken.
I don't see the friend thing as an inconsistency, she was not going to tell her family, and must have been urged to think of someone who would be close enough to advise and support, but not so close that they would tell the relatives, so eventually she opted to disclose the situation to that particular person. I don't see anything inconsistent with that.
It does look more and more like the IFPA are the ones who failed her, by letting things drag on, and not ensuring that she fully understood the situation.
In France, where I am from originally, abortion is available on demand, with conditions. Abortion is widely available until week 12, with pre-care and counselling, the morning after pill is available from school nurses and family planning organisations, for free I think. Medicated abortions in the very early stages mean that there is a lot less need for surgical abortions later on.
Women are trusted to make the right decisions.
Abortion over there is not something you'll just decide on a whim, after an "accident"; I think most women give it the very serious consideration it deserves. Maybe it's just my experience I don't know.
edit : had not seen Moderator's note on giving opinion on abortion so editing accordingly now.0 -
We also have a completely ****ed up constitutional provision to allow women to travel for the express purpose of murdering the unborn/killing their babies/termination of pregnancy which they can't be allowed to do here in our moral paradise unless they might die.0
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I will accept the right of a medical practitioner to cause the death of someone near-and-dear to me due to their religious beliefs, if I in turn can be granted the right to give 'em Ol' Sparky Texas-style afterwards.0
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No-one can say, with any degree of certainty, how severely the whole rape and pregnancy will have affected this young lady, psychologically..
Except the woman herself, which means she should decide, which is what she was refused.There does appear to be a belief among the pro-choice posters (I'm not targeting you, specifically) - that an abortion at 8 weeks would have resolved the psychological issues she faced.
That is patently untrue.
The very fact that she was raped and became pregnant will undoubtedly have long-lasting effects. They are likely to be severe. They would still have been severe if she had an abortion at 8 weeks.
Correct, but you are missing the point. Her ordeal would have been over at 8 weeks and the recovery started if she had had a termination at that point. Seeing and feeling the "unborn child" grow inside her for the following 17 weeks would have increased her trauma and delayed her recovery.
It is also a fact therefore that the refusal to let her have an abortion increased her trauma.
That is exactly the crux of the matter.
Those who are pro-choice regard the baby as a clump of cells.
Those who are pro-life regard it as a baby.
Personally, from the instant I have ever discovered I was pregnant, I always regarded the "foetus" as a baby. A human life, from conception, equally as important as mine..
I would agree with you but I would not seek to impose this opinion on the rest of the country, and it is only an opinion. As you say yourself, to some people it is a clump of cells. Allowing abortion in Ireland would allow you to keep and follow your opinion while also allowing others to follow theirs.
I do, however, have to admit that I don't understand how an abortion at 25 weeks would have been any better for her than a termination at 25 weeks.
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Nobody is saying this. The only person implying that people are saying this is the poster RalphdeJones who is putting up red herrings all over the place and unnecessarily antagonising people with his refusal to answer questions.
What people are saying, and what is logical, is that a termination at 8 weeks would have been better for the woman than a forced pregnancy following be a ceasarean section.
Do we want a society like this where men like RalphdeJones can decide what a woman can or cannot do with their own bodies?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid's_Tale0 -
Culturally, France isn't a million miles away from Ireland either and I couldn't see why something like the above wouldn't work here.
France also has a long history of Catholicism, big rural population etc etc. Although it did basically invent the modern secular republic system of government which we sort of half-arsedly implemented.
There's an assumption amongst the far right on this topic that people would be completely blasé about abortion, that's absolutely not the case in any of our culturally similar counterparts like Britain or France. It's heavily regulated but it exists in a very pragmatic balanced way.0 -
We also have a completely ****ed up constitutional provision to allow women to travel for the express purpose of murdering the unborn/killing their babies/termination of pregnancy which they can't be allowed to do here in our moral paradise unless they might die.
I'm old enough to remember pre-1992 foreign publications with ads for clinics blacked out. There was a Dublin number you could phone for advice - this was a hotline whose number could only be found in graffiti and from sympathetic friends/counsellors. Student Unions were taken to court by SPUC for distributing information on how to get an abortion in England. Information was illegal.
Today it is still fcuking appalling to be a woman of child-bearing age without the will or the means to bear a child in Ireland. But at least we can share information now, even if the most vulnerable still fall through the cracks in our moral wallpaper.
:mad:0 -
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You'd also wonder how many Irish women and up having later stage abortions abroad because no option to have an early stage one in Ireland exists.
The reality is we have a fairly unremarkable and normal level of abortions in Ireland we just outsource them to pretend we don't.
We also pretended marriages didn't breakdown until 1995... That was utterly mindbogglingly ridiculous!0
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