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Title: Repressing Abortion in Ireland Author: Mary Favier Date: 2003 Language: en Topics: abortion, Ireland, repression, Red & Black Revolution Source: Retrieved on 8th August 2021 from http://struggle.ws/wsm/rbr/rbr7/abortion.html Notes: This page is from Red & Black Revolution (no 7, Winter 2003)
The Republic of Ireland has one of the most draconian abortion laws in
the world. At present abortion may only be performed where continuation
of pregnancy poses a âreal and substantialâ risk to a pregnant womanâs
life â about 5 cases per year of 50,000 pregnancies. In reality a woman
must be dying before a lifesaving abortion can be performed.
The long-standing ban on abortion was strengthened in 1983 by a
constitutional referendum. However in 1995 the Supreme Court ruled that
a minor in the care of the state could travel to England for an abortion
because her life was at risk from suicide. Right wing groups saw this as
a breach of a total ban on abortion and further attempts at restricting
abortion were introduced as a constitutional amendment in March of 2002.
This attempted to include in the constitution a specific prohibition on
the provision of an abortion for a woman whose life was at risk by
suicide.
Yet in spite of the ban on abortion and continued attempts to make all
access virtually impossible, approximately 7000 Irish women every year
exercise their right to choose abortion and travel to England to access
legal abortion there, largely through charities provid â ing abortion
services and private clinics. This figure of 7000 includes only those
who are documented in English statistics by the giving of an Irish
address. It does not include those who use UK addresses for reasons of
confidentiality or those who travel to other countries. There has been
about a 10% rise in the figures every year. An interesting statistical
fact is that the majority of Irish women who have had abortions are
married and already have children. It is estimated that about 150,000
Irish women have had an abortion â this averages about 1:10 of adult
Irish women. Thus for Irish women abortion is common and important.
Unlike previous abortion referenda which had focused on religious issues
(1983), and legal issues (1992), the public debate on the 2002
referendum was largely about medical issues, particularly womenâs mental
health and foetal abnormality. This was a significant change from
abstract religious and legal arguments as it involved issues people
could themselves identify with. With considerable effort and
organisation across a broad range of groups the referendum was narrowly
defeated. This was significant in a number of ways. It was a defeat of
the conservative forces of the Right that were attempting to further
restrict nonexistent abortion access in this country. Pro-life
organisations had been particularly successful in getting their message
heard in political circles in Ireland in the 1980âs and 90âs. Successive
governments have buckled under the well-funded pressure and agreed to
regressive referenda. Most recently a minority government relied on the
support of four independents that were actively âpro-lifeâ and their
agreement to support the government was traded for another referendum to
further restrict access to abortion particularly in the area of suicide
risk.
The referendum was actively supported by the main government party,
Fianna Fail and by the Catholic Church. The significance of the defeat
of these combined forces by the Irish people should not be
underestimated. It marks a turning point in the Irish church/secular
divide and in the Irish urban/rural divide. The considerable ability of
the church to influence national political debate was eroded and exposed
as being a waning force. Furthermore all significant urban areas such as
the main cities and towns defeated the regressive referendum while it
was substantially carried in rural areas. This marks the end of the
historic dominance of rural culture and politics in Ireland â a welcome
development for progressive politics.
A further important result of the referendum debate was the ending of
the silence around abortion. Until now the thousands of women who have
had abortions and returned to their lives and families in Ireland were a
silent group who have had no voice and whose experiences were never
heard. This changed with a number of women making public statements
about their abortion experiences. With an approximate ratio of 1:10
Irish women having had an abortion, there is someone in everyoneâs
family who has had an abortion yet nobody knows them, as it is not
discussed. For the first time, abortion as an important public issue was
discussed without the usual âbaby killerâ name-calling, (probably a sign
of a change of strategy by pro-life groups rather than evidence that
they have gone away). It is now apparent that one of the positive
results of the referendum for those who support a womanâs right to
choose, and a huge setback for those who reject it, is that the genie is
out of the bottle as regards publicly discussing and considering
abortion. The ending of the silence has been slow and is by no means
complete, however its progress is inexorable and is to be celebrated as
a coming of age for Irish political debate.
A further benefit of the referendum was the emergence of organisations
that actively support a womanâs right to choose. Some groups also went
on to publicly support the right of Irish women to access abortion
services in Ireland. One such organisation was Doctors for Choice. The
emergence of Doctors for Choice isnât that surprising. While there is a
constitutional ban on abortion in Ireland, womenâs lives are not any
different to those who live in countries where abortion is legally
available. Wherever they live women need access to comprehensive
reproductive health care, including abortion. For better or worse, women
have always used abortion as a way of controlling their fertility. If it
is not legal, they will, in desperation, seek it illegally. In many
developing and fundamentalist countries doctors see the results of this
desperation every day, in the form of infection, infertility and
agonising death from botched abortions. In Ireland, women are fortunate
that they live close to a country that has legal accessible abortion â
England. If this escape route did not exist we would also see the
horrors of back street abortion here. However, one of the down sides of
our proximity to the UK is the safety valve it has provided to
successive right wing governments who refuse to acknowledge the need for
abortion services yet acknowledge that 7000 Irish women travel to
England every year. As one prominent politician (Mary Harney) who
supported the failed amendment, stated in 1992 âif we were an island in
the middle of the Atlantic we would have an abortion service by now in
this country...â
In their daily work family doctors see the reality of the failure of the
state to legalise abortion. They see the palpable horror of the woman
who awaits a pregnancy test that she fears is positive. She must face
this situation in the knowledge that she can not have an abortion in
Ireland. Most often, women who have unwanted pregnancies make decisions
about abortion without support and in silence. In spite of this many
women chose abortion as the best option for them. However it is not
always as simple as that. As with so many other health issues, class
issues have a significant impact on any decision that will be made. It
costs approximately 1000 Euro to travel to England from Ireland for an
abortion, covering clinic costs, and travel and accommodation costs.
This amount of money is rarely immediately available to women in poverty
or low-paying jobs or who are raising children alone. Family doctors
have seen women get credit union loans, not pay the mortgage, take the
Holy Communion savings, the holiday money and money from under grannyâs
mattress. Money lenders have been involved, with the woman eventually
paying several times over â such is the desperation of women to control
their fertility as they see fit. Child-care issues are highly
significant for many women particularly in a silent community where
excuses must be made for why one is away for the weekend. Teenage women
are particularly vulnerable to cost issues and many opt to continue the
pregnancy as the costs become insurmountable.
A direct consequence of the financial issue is that Irish women have
more late abortions that the average English woman. Late abortions after
14 weeks involve more invasive procedures, general rather than local
anaesthetics and a greater risk to health. The delay is contributed to
by difficulties in getting good information about abortion services in
the England, delays in raising the money and the need to arrange the
trip in secret. Airline strikes and bad weather on the ferries take on a
new meaning on Monday mornings when the distraught woman rings the
surgery to see if she still has time to reschedule. Similarly an asylum
seeker must be told that if she travels to the UK for an abortion she is
likely to forfeit her asylum application. The result is she must now
face an enforced pregnancy. These are examples of the silence around
women and abortion in Ireland â their distress is not documented or
considered valid.
Doctors have traditionally expressed a conservative voice on abortion.
In reality many doctors have been dealing with the issues of abortion in
their daily work and have formed opinions not usually expressed
publicly. In the past, public statements have been left to those doctors
who have generally adopted a pro-life position. This has become the
safe, acceptable position on abortion for doctors. With the advent of
Doctors for Choice this has changed. The group developed from an ad hoc
group of pro-choice doctors that felt an alternative medical position
needed to be strongly stated in the debate around the referendum. The
organisation quickly grew from there. Doctors for Choice represents all
the specialities of medicine but particularly general practice, probably
because this is the group of doctors who actually see the female
patients that abortion impacts on. The aims of Doctors for Choice are to
give a voice to doctors who support a womanâs right to choose and to
work towards the provision of comprehensive reproductive health care
services including abortion in Ireland. We see this as a basic health
entitlement of women resident in Ireland. To do this there needs to be
provision of quality abortion services that are accessible regardless of
ability to pay. To this end medical education must include abortion
provision training and abortion must not be excluded from public
hospitals by the religious governance of the hospital. Similarly,
doctors who provide care to patients seeking abortion must be protected
by law.
Doctors for Choice has been considerably more successful than initially
expected. What was thought of as a long haul to encourage doctors to
join a pro-choice organisation was met with many messages of support and
membership subscriptions. It is notable that as doctors we had also
internalised the silence around abortion in Ireland. We had allowed the
agenda to be set by right wing doctors. To do otherwise was to risk
being labeled an abortion doctor and to suffer the subsequent silent
professional discrimination considered inevitable in Catholic Ireland.
As an organisation we plan to ensure that our message is heard amongst
the medical profession so as to provide support to those doctors who
thought they were working alone. We also aim to give support to those
women who thought the medical profession in Ireland did not include
doctors who respected their right to make their own decisions about
their reproductive health. The organisation is small but growing
steadily. Our immediate priority is consolidating our membership. By
being open and public, we will make the subject an easier one for
doctors to express a pro-choice opinion on. This task will be slow, and
hasnât been without difficulties. Not all groups working to defeat the
recent referendum agreed with our unequivocal statements about the right
of Irish women to access abortion in Ireland. It is an unfortunate fact
the even those on the left have internalised the message of silence â
that the unmentionable of abortion in Ireland is too radical to be
discussed at this time. It is our contention that this plays in to the
hands of the conservative, Catholic right wing who have, to date, set
the agenda â one where we canât talk about the right of Irish people to
a quality reproductive health care service, including abortion. As
pro-choice advocates we must be prepared to publicly identify with the
7000 women who access abortion in England every year â we must state
that this service should be available in Ireland. To do otherwise is
defeatist and hypocritical. It is frustrating and undermining for all
the women who travel to England every year, to see political groups
support their right to do so, but not take the next logical step of
publicly supporting abortion provision in Ireland. By shying away from
this statement womenâs choices are not being fully respected and
validated.
To change this reticence will be slow, however Doctors for Choice as a
group would argue that only by doing so can we build strength and unity
for what will be a long campaign to achieve abortion provision in
Ireland. However, we donât doubt it will eventually be successful.
Ireland is changing is spite of the efforts of the Catholic Church and
the main political parties. This social and cultural liberalisation will
be much faster in the next twenty years than the last twenty. With hard
work and committed campaigning by pro-choice groups it is likely that in
twenty years time there will be some form of legalised abortion in
Ireland. An important part of this transition will be informing and
changing the opinions of the medical profession, as their participation
is intrinsic to any abortion provision. To date this has been easier
than expected but a lot of work remains, particularly as prolife
organisations are likely to regroup after their recent defeat and may
now choose to target specific influential groups such as doctors.
However the medical profession is also changing and becoming less
conservative and isolationist. It is this momentum for change that
Doctors for Choice will work with and encourage.
It is likely that there is going to be minimal political will to change
Irish abortion laws. Commitments made by political parties to legislate
along the lines of the X case are likely to evaporate as they seek to
distance themselves from this contentious issue. Furthermore, any change
to allow for suicide risk and foetal malformation would involve only a
very small change in the law and would not substantively affect the
lives of Irish women seeking abortion. The Labour Party has supported
such a change in the law, if they were returned to government. They
argue that this is all that can be achieved now and is thus better than
nothing. It serves their private expressions of a pro-choice position
while publicly sitting on the fence. Pro-choice activists need to be
cautious about being drawn in to any broad alliance of support for such
a limited legal change. Doctors for Choice would argue that this is a
mistake as it continues to deny the reality of the 7000 women travelling
to England every year. At all times this issue should remain the focus
of any campaign to change the law. Scarce energy and resources are
better spent on creating an acceptance of abortion as a reality in
Ireland. Any campaign should start with where it means to end â Irish
women have a right to access abortion services in Ireland and the law
needs to be changed accordingly.