Restrictive Abortion Information Legislation Jeopardises Women’s Health

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | feature

Saturday March 06, 2004 14:13

by Niav - Alliance For Choice

International Womens Day: Alliance for Choice to Publicly Break Terms of 1995 Act

Press Release for Alliance For Choice.

Event: Day of Action against the Information Act! (Pro-Choice Protest).

Venue: Department of Justice, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2.

Time: Monday 8th March (International Women's Day) 12.30 pm.

afc pic from struggle ‘Alliance For Choice’ will be publicly breaking the 1995 Information Act outside the Department of Justice in Dublin on Monday 8th March. The ‘Regulation of Information (Services outside the State for Terminations of Pregnancies) Act 1995’ or more commonly known as the ‘Abortion Information Act 1995’ severely restricts Irish people’s access to information about abortion services abroad. The legislation has serious implications for the protection of women’s welfare when they are faced with a crisis pregnancy. The Act sets out the conditions under which information (the names, addresses and telephone numbers of abortion clinics) may be given, by individuals or agencies, on legal abortion services available outside Ireland. Under the terms of the Act, information can only be given in the context of face-to-face counselling. It is illegal for a doctor to make an appointment with an abortion service on behalf of a pregnant woman, even if her health is at risk.

Commenting Niav Keating said: “By restricting Irish people’s access to information about abortion services abroad, the Irish government is placing unnecessary stress and strain on Irish women. This form of censorship cannot be allowed to continue. Irish women must be able to obtain information easily in order to allow them to make informed decisions when facing an unexpected pregnancy. Despite the difficulties caused by the Act, more than 6,000 women per year have abortions in Britain. We demand that the 1995 Information Act be repealed so that women can obtain information with anonymity and ease. We also call for the regulation of all agencies offering pregnancy counselling. We will be publicly distributing leaflets that include the names and telephone numbers of clinics in the United Kingdom and Europe on International Women’s Day. We see this action as an act of civil disobedience similar to the actions of the women involved in the Contraceptive Train who in 1971 travelled to Belfast and purchased contraceptives. On their return to Dublin they challenged the customs officers at Connolly Train station by openly declaring their illegal imports.“

Alliance for Choice: Background
AFC Information for Irish women about abortion services in the UK and Europe

FULL TEXT OF ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION

Press Release for Alliance For Choice.

Event: Day of Action against the Information Act! (Pro-Choice Protest).

Venue: Department of Justice, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2.

Time: Monday 8th March (International Women's Day) 12.30 pm.

‘Alliance For Choice’ will be publicly breaking the 1995 Information Act outside the Department of Justice in Dublin on Monday 8th March. The ‘Regulation of Information (Services outside the State for Terminations of Pregnancies) Act 1995’ or more commonly known as the ‘Abortion Information Act 1995’ severely restricts Irish people’s access to information about abortion services abroad. The legislation has serious implications for the protection of women’s welfare when they are faced with a crisis pregnancy. The Act sets out the conditions under which information (the names, addresses and telephone numbers of abortion clinics) may be given, by individuals or agencies, on legal abortion services available outside Ireland. Under the terms of the Act, information can only be given in the context of face-to-face counselling. It is illegal for a doctor to make an appointment with an abortion service on behalf of a pregnant woman, even if her health is at risk.

Commenting Niav Keating said:
“By restricting Irish people’s access to information about abortion services abroad, the Irish government is placing unnecessary stress and strain on Irish women. This form of censorship cannot be allowed to continue. Irish women must be able to obtain information easily in order to allow them to make informed decisions when facing an unexpected pregnancy. Despite the difficulties caused by the Act, more than 6,000 women per year have abortions in Britain. We demand that the 1995 Information Act be repealed so that women can obtain information with anonymity and ease. We also call for the regulation of all agencies offering pregnancy counselling. We will be publicly distributing leaflets that include the names and telephone numbers of clinics in the United Kingdom and Europe on International Women’s Day. We see this action as an act of civil disobedience similar to the actions of the women involved in the Contraceptive Train who in 1971 travelled to Belfast and purchased contraceptives. On their return to Dublin they challenged the customs officers at Connolly Train station by openly declaring their illegal imports. “

Commenting Clare Lee said:
“The Crisis Pregnancy Agency, established by the Irish government, are currently engaged in a nation-wide ‘Positive Options’ campaign that tells us that “the positive way to deal with a crisis, is to consider your options”. However, only 3 of the 6 organisations listed by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency will provide Irish women with information about all their options - adoption, abortion and parenting. Non-directive counselling is only offered by the Irish Family Planning Association, the Dublin Well Woman Clinic and Cherish. At present, counselling services in Ireland are not regulated which means that any individual or group can establish a counselling service and this is an outrageous situation.”

Quotes end.

‘Alliance For Choice’ is a diverse group of pro-choice activists who are campaigning for free, safe and legal abortion services in Ireland.

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Comments (14 of 14)

Could someone from AFC submit a contact e-mail thru .. .

by imcer

Fri Mar 05, 2004 20:40

the 'contact' form. Would be a good idea here too. A press release without a contact number?

Gluttony

by Flange joint

Sun Mar 07, 2004 01:18

The concept of choice is gluttony in a hedious desguise. If choice is to be considered for humans it must be considered for all. If a poor woman in Ethiopia concieves then she must live and die with that child. The selfishness of the west convinces women that they have a choice to love their child. If you loved someone, would you deny them life.

Be not so quick to deal out death.

Still necessary

by Campaigner

Sun Mar 07, 2004 16:59

The sad part is that this campaign is still necessary after all that has transpired over the past thirty-plus years. We are still having to deal with the restrictions originating from the dominance of religious fundamentalism. If our politicians had any courage we would not now be having to mount campaigns for basic civil rights, and having to endure the ignorant outpourings of semi-literates like "Flange joint".

Abortion

by Christopher Gambino - youth defense

Sun Mar 07, 2004 20:10

Abortion is sick. May i suggest all of y'all check out the link to see what really happens.
God Bless

The usual "pro choice (death)" rubbish

by until it sleeps

Mon Mar 08, 2004 00:04

The abortion laws in this country are perfectly adequate to protect women's health. Suggestions of 'psychological' damage are irrelevent. If we work by this logic, why shouldn't a depressed mother be allowed to kill her child or husband or anyone who causes her depression?

Irrelevent?

by Very relevent person

Mon Mar 08, 2004 00:33

So, a person's psychological condition is "irrelevent". Of course it is - to people who regarded the psychical and psychological welfare of living children as irrelevent when they were being abused in religious-run institutions.
These are the same people who think nothing of murdering doctors who perform necessary medical procedures for women. They are only interested in pushing their stupid religion down our throats. This is where we say 'STOP', we are not having any more of it.

Mon Mar 08, 2004 01:17

For the record, I don't believe in God and have no religious agenda to push. Frankly I don't see how child abuse in religious institutions is relavent to this discussion either. Also, How exactly is abortion on demand a "necessary medical procedure" anyway. If ANYONE can draw a line in the sand and say here is a cluster of cells and now its a baby, I'll become Pro-Abortion. But you can't. And I don't see a world of difference between an (especially late term) abortion and killing a newborn. Have you seen the videos? I have, and its not pleasant. How far do you go? How about plunging a syringe of formaldehyde into the babys head as its being born, like in China? How about abortion up th the age of 5?

CONSERVATIVE AND PROUD.

Information for Irish women!

Mon Mar 08, 2004 01:20

Right to Choice, Right to Information!

To contact the BPAS action line from Ireland phone +44 121 450 7700.
This action line is available, Monday to Friday from 8am to 9pm,
Saturday – 8.30 am to 6pm and on Sunday – 9.30am to 2.30pm.
Or visit their website at http://www.bpas.org

To contact Marie Stopes from Ireland phone +44 117 900 5555
Or visit their website at http://www.mariestopesorg.uk

This website has been set up by Irish Pro-Choice activists and gives information about abortion services in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. It also provides you will information about travel and accommodation as well as the numbers of Irish agencies that provide both pregnancy counselling and post-abortion counselling.
http://struggle.ws/ireland/choice

LEAFLET FOR DISTRIBUTION 0.03 Mb

Good work

by Tax payer

Mon Mar 08, 2004 03:22

Good work.
Pity we are still at the stage we were at twenty years ago, having to defy the law to give out basic information about services in another country, when these services should be freely available here. I pay my taxes, I want those taxes to be used to provide these services. I don't want my taxes to be creamed off into the pockets of crooked Fianna Fail layabouts.

Go maith!

by Clare

Mon Mar 08, 2004 14:51

Great work so far. Heard Niav on the radio this morning - very good.

Let us all know how ye get on today on the streets. I'm sorry I couldn't join in today.

Selfish

Mon Mar 08, 2004 20:43

Abortion is acrid with selfish morals. Why would a mother want to give up her child? For the childs benifit? Dancing across fields lavished with flowers of gluttonous desire, the women of the western world are content.

Jealousy, the desire for sloth and the hunger of lust has led us into thinking that we can always choose the easiest way out.

The dying people of the third world need more attention than the spoilt brats of the first world.

Stopped clock

by Joe

Tue Mar 09, 2004 11:59

Like the stopped clock that is right twice a day 'flange joint' accidentaly says something in his reference to the 'third world' above. I thought I'd use a right wing source for this one to help him see the point a bit clearer, this is from the RAND web site (right wing US think tank).

"The World Health Organization defines an unsafe abortion as an abortion not provided through approved facilities and/or persons. WHO estimates that almost 20 million unsafe abortions (43 percent of the total number of abortions) occur each year. The vast majority of these are in Asia and Africa in countries where abortion is illegal. ... One-third of women undergoing unsafe abortions experience serious complications as a result of the procedure - often in countries least prepared to deal with them - including approximately 80,000 maternal deaths each year and hundreds of thousands of disabilities. One in eight maternal deaths worldwide is a result of an unsafe abortion."
http://www.rand.org/labor/popmatters/ans4.html

So yes women in Ireland are 'lucky' that they (mostly) have the freedom to travel and can (mostly) get the cost of going abroad for an abortion together, even if that involves money lenders. It's women in anti-abortion 3rd world countries that really suffer with some 80,000 dying because abortion is illegal so they have no obtion but an unsafe and illegal abortion.

So FC feel free to not worry about women in Ireland and go off and campaign for free, safe and legal abortion everywhere else on the planet. From the attitudes you display towards women in your posts you wouildn't be that welcome here and are probably better off heading off for somewhere where no women speaks English.

Well done, keep up the good work!

by Shane OCurry

Tue Mar 09, 2004 13:47

s.ocurry at ulster dot ac dot uk

It's thigh time we had a comprehensive sexual health program, with explicit sex education, free contraception and advice, full free safe abortion facilities, and non-directive pregnancy counselling, north and south of the border.

Just a wee report on yesterday

by VenusInFurs - UCD SP

Tue Mar 09, 2004 19:53

cogstar at hotmail dot com

Yesterday Alliance for Choice gave the proverbial two fingers to the State by handing out pro-choice leaflets outside the Dept. of Justice and defying the 1995 Information Act, which prohibits women from accessing information about abortion sevices abroad. Amongst the 15 or so people participating in the action were members of UCD Alliance for Choice and members of the Socialist Party and Labour Party. Just as in the anti bin tax campaign, the armchair communists from Spartacist Group Ireland also paid a visit to us activists to push their paper, but refrained from participating in the action because of the 'craven appeals' in the leaflet which only served to 'reinforce people's illusions in the bourgeois state'(!).

Despite the poor turnout, but armed with a swanky new banner and a megaphone, we managed to distribute all our leaflets in a one hour period between 12.30 and 1.30. Amongst the chants screamed with gusto from the megaphone were 'Not the Church, Not the State, Women must decide their Fate!' and, well, I kinda forget the other ones!

One of the activists also presented a cop present at the protest with a leaflet, which he accepted. When informed he had just broken the 1995 Information Act, he looked puzzled and bewildered! Alliance for Choice 1, the State 0. Should have made a citizen's arrest!

Though the anti-woman and clerical fascist pricks from Youth Defense didn't show thier ugly mugs, a senile nun on two occasions made it known that we were advocating 'mass murder' and that she would pray for our souls. Did it make me and the others reflect on what we were doing, that we may be responsible for the genocide of a bunch of cells? Did it fuck! Alliance for Choice 1, the Church 0!

All in all, it was a relatively successful action and despite the small numbers, all those involved in the action were buoyed by the positive reaction of the public. If anyone has any info as regards the actions that took place down in Shannon and Cork, please do post.

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Restrictive Abortion Information Legislation Jeopardises Women’s Health

Comments (14 of 14)