There’s a couple of inaccuracies in the article. Women in Ireland have the right to travel to the UK or mainland Europe for an abortion, and for the last 20 years or so it’s been legal for doctors and women’s health clinics to distribute details on how to do so.
Also, the jail sentence for “illegally procuring a miscarraige” is 14 years, and came into law in 2013, and only covers abortions that take place in Ireland. In practice the only people who will be liable for the sentence are women who manage to smuggle the abortion pill past customs and can be proven to have taken it in order to terminate a pregnancy.
The same law - the protection of life during pregnancy act - is meant to allow for abortions in cases where the life of the mother is in danger, but its first challenge came last August from a refugee who was raped before she arrived in Ireland and discovered she was pregnant after. She threatened to kill herself and went on hunger strike and eventually the HSE agreed to allow an abortion. They then dithered until she was 24 weeks gone and instead gave her a c-section.
Since then, about a year ago doctors refused to remove a brain-dead pregnant woman from life support, against her family’s wishes, for fear of being prosecuted. Eventually a court order was issued that lead to disconnection.
The respect for “life” when it comes to women is quite evident.
Oh absolutely. The Pro-lifers here lauded Migrant Y’s premature baby as “baby Hope”, giving it a feminine name even though we didn’t know the gender, and claiming this was a great victory. Never mind that this child has something like a 5% chance of surviving to adulthood in good health, and the mother has physical scars to go along with her emotional ones. (EDIT, and they stopped talking about the baby as soon as the story fell out of the news cycle, of course)
Even leaving aside the horrible way her attempt to get an abortion was handled, it’s another damning case of Ireland’s neglect towards asylum seekers and migrants. Don’t google Direct Provisioning unless you enjoy getting angry.
Liam Neeson to Ireland be all like…
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