As the Guttmacher Institute reports, legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. Which raises the question, what would an anti-abortion victory in New Zealand look like? Quite possibly, it would look like present-day Ireland. Here’s an update on what Irish women face.
In New Zealand in the early and late 70s, when abortion was essentially illegal, women travelled abroad in their thousands, or sought out illegal operators or private hospitals who disguised what they were doing. In present-day Ireland, it’s roughly the same picture, though without the private hospitals. Abortion is illegal in the Republic of Ireland, as well as in Northern Ireland, and little progress toward choice has been made in recent years. An estimated 6,000 women travel from Ireland to the UK for abortions each year, though the total number travelling abroad is likely to be an underestimate because it is based on women who give Irish addresses and does not count those who go to other countries, like France and the Netherlands. Besides abortion being illegal, there are strict information laws covering what you can and cannot say about abortion to a third party, in public or private. The text of the Abortion Information Act is available here.
In the Republic and the North, there are very strong and active anti-abortion movements (no major party supports choice) and small (but active) pro-choice groups. The main pro-choice groups in the Republic are Choice Ireland, a feminist activist group, and Safe and Legal, while in the North there is the Alliance for Choice.
CURRENT ISSUES:
1. ABC CASE: What’s known as the ABC case is due to be heard in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on 9 December. The case has been taken by three women from Ireland (A, B and C) and focuses on whether their human rights were violated because they were not able to obtain abortions in Ireland (they travelled to England). According to a report by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, one of the women had a high risk of an ectopic pregnancy; another had undergone chemotherapy for cancer treatment and sought but could not find a doctor willing to tell her whether her life would be at risk if she continued the pregnancy and how the fetus might have been affected; the third had four children in foster care because of problems with alcoholism. She was unmarried, unemployed and living in poverty. The facts of the case are also available at the Court's Web site, and this summary also include a very good account of the history and present state of Irish abortion law.
2. ROGUE AGENCIES: One pro-choice campaign in the Republic has been against rogue counseling agencies that are unregulated, that advertise in the Irish equivalent of the Yellow Pages, and that give women false information in an effort to dissuade them from abortion. This has been a focus of Choice Ireland, which has secured a hearing on the matter in front of a Parliamentary (Oireachtas) committee, scheduled for early December. For more on the group’s campaign, visit: www.choiceireland.org
3. DEVOLUTION IN THE NORTH: Northern Ireland is exempt from the 1967 UK Abortion Act, and all attempts to extend the Act to N.I. have failed, including one in 2008-9 by Labour MP Diane Abbott. Control over justice and policing is expected to be handed over to the Stormont Assembly in the North (from Westminster) soon, and when that happens, pro-choice supporters expect there to be even less likelihood of change because, as one Belfast columnist wrote, “Once justice is devolved, women seeking the right to choose will be left at the mercy of the DUP and Sinn Fein, both of which, whatever their disagreements on other matters, are unlikely to budge on abortion.” To read that excellent article, "Why have we one rule for abortion in Lusaka and another in Lisburn?” in full, click here.
4. ILLEGAL ABORTION: There is anecdotal evidence of a rise in illegal abortions in Ireland, but no hard statistics. The group Women on Web, which distributes the abortion pill by mail to women who meet its criteria, warns women from Ireland: “Sorry, the medical abortion can not be provided to Ireland. Recently some packages have been seized by the Irish Medical Board and we cannot guarantee that the package will get to you safely.” In addition, migrant women, women seeking refugee status and illegal immigrants cannot go abroad for abortions because of difficulties re-entering the country (also frequently for financial reasons). And, increasingly, women who are citizens and legal residents of Ireland cannot afford the cost of travel to a UK clinic, which can cost around 2000 euro.
9 November 2009