I’ve talked a lot recently about people getting in the way of access to abortion in Ireland. The women who ratted their housemate out to the police because she wasn’t sorry enough about her abortion. I’ve gotten deeply snarky about people who make mind-bogglingly ignorant arguments against pregnant people’s right to choose.
I have’t talked that much about the other side: the people who speak up. Those who tell their stories. People who risk arrest and villification to choose their own path or to support others’ choices. The big damn abortion heroes of our time.
As there are a lot of people to share, this post is split this into three parts. Here are Part One and Part Two.
Keep Shouting
There’s no better way to break a taboo than to keep shouting. There’s Wendy from Feminist Ire’s fury at the Belfast abortion rats:
The housemates are clearly taking note of the reaction on social media, so allow me to add this one: Yes, you are the bad ones in this. You are awful. You are the worst people I have read or heard anything about today. I am disgusted to breathe the same air as you. I hope you step on a Lego for every remaining day of your terrible life.
Stavvers, brilliant as always, is equally scathing:
Your housemate made a terrible mistake. Not in self-inducing her abortion, but in trusting you enough to tell you what she was doing. Perhaps she was reaching out, and she didn’t want to suffer alone. Perhaps you had a good relationship before it. I don’t know why she would have trusted you enough to let you know, but I know if she hadn’t, she would not be considered a convicted criminal. Her options were essentially to go through the whole thing alone, or to trust others enough to talk to them. You betrayed her trust, her confidence. You threw it back in her face.
You know that in your part of the country, abortion is illegal and those who need it can face imprisonment. You know that your part of the country has laws which contravene basic human rights–and indeed, basic human decency. You know that Northern Ireland abortion laws are not designed to help, but rather to punish. Rather than feeling disgusted by that, you decided to take advantage of that fact and use this state of affairs to get revenge on a young woman who who made a dire decision.
There are no other words for it. You’re horrible people.
Me, Mine and Other Bits’s Speccy echoes Alliance for Choice’s questions about why this woman:
I can’t help but feel that this young woman’s situation is being used, again and again. We are in the run up to an election. This case has catalysed discussion. I’m happy that there is a discussion, but I’m deeply uncomfortable as to how it has come about. Like when there was a picture of a drowned refugee toddler, we seem unable to have a conversation unless we can imagine a ‘victim’ (Choose the young woman, the ‘wee baby’, the ‘traumatised’ flatmates as you prefer.)
The Public Prosecution Service decided that this case was in the ‘public interest’. I don’t know how such decisions are made. Hundreds of women have self reported abortions to the police and no action was taken. What’s different about this? Flatmates, elections, High Court decisions? Not content with a successful prosecution, the ‘pro life’ group want a longer sentence as both punishment and deterrent.Is there evidence from anywhere in the world that such a move reduces unwanted pregnancy?
Silly me. That’s not the interest of that group. They’re interested in reducing abortion, not unwanted pregnancy. But, surely, if society worked on the latter in a non judgemental fashion, the former would be reduced anyway?
Janet Ní Shuilleabháin is sharing her outrage and taking every chance she can get to inform:
“Good Morning, I am here to tell you two things and five facts.”
I raised my right hand up with with raised fingers and then my left with five raised fingers. Then lowered my right and and ticked off with my fingers on my right both things.
“The first thing I am going to tell you is that I am angry, very angry and that anger is why I am not going to talk about the topic I indicated to our lecturer I am going to instead in light of the court case in Belfast, I am going to talk about the abortion pills.
The second thing I will tell you is that, some of what I am about to say may be illegal, it may break the 1995 abortion information act, but as no one has ever been prosecuted under the act and the abortion pills were not considered when it was created I don’t know for sure. ”
I then lowered my right and and raised my left with all fingers raised, curling one after the other as I ticked off each fact starting with my index finger.
Sharmander’s put together an extensive list of things you can do to support the pro-choice effort in Ireland, North and South, and she also has something to say to that anonymous woman we’re all talking about:
My heart goes out to the woman who is caught up in the middle of this situation. I know your identity is protected, but I wish with all my heart that this case wasn’t so public, with every intimate detail of the situation you were in two years ago plastered in the media. It is a disservice on the highest order to you. All I can say to you, in case you’re out there and reading this, that you have so much support north and south of the border of Ireland, and we are going to continue fighting so this never happens again. I’m so sorry that this is happening to you, as you do not deserve this. Nobody deserves this.
Jemima2016 of Sometimes, It’s Just A Cigar remembers her own experiences miscarrying, and reminds us that our right to choose what we do with our bodies is about so much more than ending a pregnancy:
Wider than someones personal views on the morality of abortion, and linking to so much of the criticism of sex work is the idea that when someone does not share our feelings then their feelings are wrong. Nothing is policed so much as what women (cis or trans) chose to do with their bodies. If you become pregnant you are assumed to feel a set range of emotions, go through a certain, predetermined path, with stops at joy, blooming, maternal love and contentment at your lot. We are all still expected to be Mary, bowing our heads with acquiesce at the news we are pregnant, empty vessels without agency, filled by the will of another. In the moment of having wombs we cease to be anything but vessels for those wombs, subsumed within them. As such anything but acquiescence is seen as morally wrong, criminal even.
Don’t ask, don’t tell
Sometimes it’s important to shout. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to know when to keep quiet. You see, in the North if a woman admits to her nurse or doctor that she had an abortion, her healthcare professionals may be legally obliged to report her:
Ms Hughes [of the Royal College of Midwives] said that ideally doctors would rather know as much information as possible from their patients but that this puts both people in an “untenable position” in this scenario.
“Because the law is quite clear that you must report any crime which attaches to it more than five years of a prison sentence or you yourself face criminal proceedings,” she added.
“It’s like someone coming into casualty and they have been shot, you have to report that. It’s in that sort of arena. But it’s wider than just nurses and midwives working in hospitals.
“If you are a school nurse, for example, and somebody comes flying through the door saying ‘nurse quick my friend is bleeding to death in the toilet, she bought these tablets on the internet’
“That isn’t even the woman herself giving that information, that’s somebody else and once you know it you can’t unknow it, it’s a very difficult circle to square and the guidance doesn’t help.”
Because of this, she’s recommending that nurses and doctors protect their patients with a don’t ask, don’t tell policy:
“The American army used to have this saying. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’. I think that’s exactly the same principle that’s going to have to be adopted here. It’s not very satisfactory.
“The alternative is stick your two fingers in your ears and sing very loudly.
“Take your fingers out of your ears and look at the women and say ‘you are telling me you have been pregnant, you are no longer pregnant and are bleeding. How can I help you?’
…”It’s almost, ‘don’t tell me what you’ve done because you will put me in a position where I have to do something about it’.”
This was the final part (so far) in a series of three on the Big Damn Abortion Heroes of Ireland, North and South. You can read parts One and Two here. Have I missed anyone?
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