Amid all the talk of separation between the UK and its EU neighbours there is an opportunity to build a solidarity movement, at least between people in Britain and Ireland. Draconian laws that force women from both parts of Ireland to travel to Britain to access abortion have never received so much public attention as recently, and growing awareness in Britain is giving Irish women new hope.
The stories are heartbreaking: couples bringing the remains of foetuses with fatal abnormalities home through British airports in freezer bags because they couldn’t have a termination in an Irish hospital; the depravity of forcing a raped asylum seeker on hunger strike to continue a pregnancy she didn’t want; the brain-dead woman kept alive because she was pregnant; the young Northern Irish woman given a suspended sentence because she took abortion pills to end a pregnancy and her housemates told the police. There is no abortion in Ireland for rape, for incest, for fatal foetal abnormalities. Let’s be clear though, thousands of Irish women have abortions every year – they just don’t have them in Ireland. An Irish problem washes up on Britain’s shores.
Many things led to the ban on abortion in Ireland. But those factors – Catholicism, misogyny, an obsession with controlling women’s bodies – sound more archaic with each passing year. Within Ireland, consistent polling shows there is now a desire for women not to be criminalised for abortions and for the constitutional ban on abortion to be repealed. The tangible obstacle is the eighth amendment to the constitution, which was inserted after a referendum in 1983. This clause states: “The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”
Before any abortion legislation can be enacted, this amendment (which effectively puts the life of the unborn on a par with the life of the mother) needs to be overturned by referendum. But Irish women are no longer waiting for change to come. We are demanding it, and asking our allies to help.
The movement to repeal the 8th is growing, especially since the equal marriage referendum last year inspired a generation of young Irish people. In the days after that referendum, the question that Irish people hear repeatedly from abroad was raised: how can Ireland have gay marriage and not abortion? It’s one that can only be answered by acknowledging that misogyny in Ireland runs even deeper than homophobia.
What the equal marriage referendum taught us was that change comes from the bottom up. And we don’t just need one voice advocating for change, but many. The recent March for Choice in Dublin was replicated in cities around the world, with tens of thousands of people turning out to demand reproductive rights.
Sweeping things under the carpet is a national sport in Ireland, but at last, women’s personal stories are informing a movement in a way that was impossible in the past because of social taboos. We have a torrid history of oppressing women, thanks to the power the Catholic church once wielded in collusion with the state. Women are now telling their abortion stories in great numbers for the first time, and as we learned during the equal marriage referendum campaign, you can’t beat real-life experiences with abstract arguments.
Successive Irish governments haven’t listened to their female citizens. But what Irish governments really dislike is being embarrassed from abroad. As a nation, we are insecure, obsessed with our identity and what people think of us. So if politicians don’t have the guts to tackle this issue then they need to be shamed into action.
Solidarity matters because the extended hand often feels so much warmer than your own. The idea that people you don’t even know care about you is important. It bolsters you. And while solidarity from outside Ireland exists in pockets, we now need it from Britain en masse.
British people need to stomp on the streets and on the floors of parliament to help shame our government. British people should especially demand that women in Northern Ireland have the same reproductive rights as in England, Scotland, and Wales, and that those rights be extended to women on the Isle of Man too. A strip of sea separates us, but we are just like you. We watch EastEnders, shop in Topshop, cry at Bake Off and drink gin. Your football teams are our football teams. We don’t earn enough and are sick of the rain. We are not “other”.
Many women and groups in Britain are already helping. The Abortion Support Network, which was established in 2009, assists women financially and logistically to access abortion in Britain. In London, protesters have marched with wheelie suitcases, symbolising the dozen women who travel each day from Ireland to access abortion in Britain. Volunteers give Irish women who are travelling for abortions a bed to sleep in. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service clinics sometimes offer reduced fees for Irish women who can’t afford the price of an abortion.
But there is still no other medical procedure that has to be undergone in such a clandestine manner, and that is why we need Britain to do more. We are so intertwined; by language, by history, by culture, by geography. Our lives and lifestyles are to an outside eye so similar. So imagine if what we’re dealing with was your reality? It is as unfair and heartbreaking to us as it would be if it were you. We need your help.