Back street abortions illustrate need for free, safe and legal abortion services in Ireland

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Thursday July 08, 2004 19:12

by Niav - Alliance For Choice

allianceforchoice at yahoo dot com

http://struggle.ws/ireland/allianceforchoice/index.html

News report about Gardai investigations into back street abortions in Ireland from a memeber of Alliance For Choice.

The gardai are investigating two illegal back street abortions that were carried out in Dublin in the last two months. In one case a Romanian woman in her late 20s is believed to have paid a Moldovan woman 500 euros to terminate her pregnancy. An apartment in Blackhall Place has been searched and medical equipment and anaesthetic chemicals have been found. In the second case, a Dublin maternity hospital contacted the gardai after a woman in her early 20s and from the Philippines was admitted following complications that arose from a back street abortion.

Back street abortions are not a new phenomenon in Ireland and between 1926 and 1974 there were at least 58 recorded prosecutions under the 1861 Offences against the Persons Act. However, since the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain, back street abortion had ceased to be a major problem in Ireland as many Irish women travelled to the UK to terminate a pregnancy. Between January 1980 and December 2002, over 105,000 Irish women terminated a pregnancy in the UK. Since 1967, 5 women are known to have died from back street abortions in Northern Ireland.

However, because women have to leave this country to terminate a pregnancy, the financial strain is considerable. It will cost approximately €1000. A surgical abortion cost £460 sterling. Women also have to cover the cost of travelling by plane or by ferry as well as accommodation costs. Raising this money can be incredibly difficult especially for students, asylum seekers and those in low paid jobs. When women are unable to raise this money they have no option but to resort to perform an abortion by themselves or seek someone to perform the procedure for them. Back street abortions cause the deaths of about 70,000 women every year world wide.

In response to today’s media reports, the pro-life group, Youth Defense have accused the National Union of Journalists as a pro-abortion group. They claim that the back street abortions never took place and have been invented and hyped up by the Irish media in order to create a false need for abortion.

Whether the Irish State, Catholic Church and Pro-Life groups like to admit it, abortion is very much a reality for women in Ireland. Despite the difficulties Irish women face with the ban on abortion and the restrictions on information about abortion services in Ireland, approximately 7000 Irish women every year choose to terminate a pregnancy.

‘Alliance For Choice’ is a diverse group of pro-choice activists who are campaigning for free, safe and legal abortion services in Ireland. This involves:
·Campaigning for the repeal of Articles 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Persons Act 1861.
·Campaigning for a referendum to delete the 8th Amendment. The 8th Amendment “acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right”.
·Campaigning for the 1995 Information Act to be deleted so that women can obtain information with anonymity and ease. We also want the regulation of all pregnancy-counselling agencies.

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Comments (1 of 1)

Good mothers needed - No pretenders need apply

by Mother

Sat Jul 10, 2004 16:51

The European Court of Human Rights on 8th July in Strasbourg ruled (14 votes to 3) that a therapeutic abortion carried out on a six-month old foetus was not a violation of Art 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Court was convinced that it was neither desirable, nor even possible as matters stood, to answer in the abstract the question whether the unborn child was a person for the purposes of Art. 2 of the Convention.

I wonder how the Court was convinced that it wasn't "desirable"? Would it be "bad for business"? Is that why? We are told that had the decision gone the other way, it could lead to a flood of legal challenges to abortion rights across Europe.

The Court also recommended that the matter be dealt with at national level. At lease this is some good news for us. They said that there is "no European consensus on the scientific and legal definition of the beginning of life". So our European pre-born children are at the mercy of "consensus". Obviously consensus is what makes something lawful or unlawful, right or wrong.

Pro-life people must re-double their efforts and their prayers if we are to bring about a change of attitude and achieve a consensus that life begins at the moment of conception (fertilisation), and get foeticide (direct and intentional termination of innocent unborn life) declared to be a violation of Art. 2 of the Convention.

The case was taken by a French woman who was mistakenly treated for the removal of a coil, which, it was held, led to the puncturing of the amniotic sac making abortion necessary.

After the aborted child’s life is over there still remains the cruel and inescapable burden of the mothers guilt and the fathers right to have a family annihilated whether this was with both parents consent or just the mother decided only, the pain remains alive.

Read first hand accounts from the sufferers

http://www.gargaro.com/regrets.html

http://www.hoyweb.com/lh/abortion2.htm

http://www.rlbm.tripod.com/anonymous3.html

or Texas Woman Suing Abortionist for Abortion she Regrets
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/mar/04033105.html

Major Psychological Sequelae Of Abortion1
REQUIREMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT

In a study of post-abortion patients only 8 weeks after their abortion, researchers found that 44% complained of nervous disorders, 36% had experienced sleep disturbances, 31% had regrets about their decision, and 11% had been prescribed psychotropic medicine by their family, doctor. 2 A 5 year retrospective study in two Canadian provinces found significantly greater use of medical and psychiatric services among aborted women. Most significant was the finding that 25% of aborted women made visits to psychiatrists as compared to 3% of the control group 3 Women who have had abortions are significantly more likely than others to subsequently require admission to a psychiatric hospital. At especially high risk are teenagers, separated or divorced women, and women with a history of more than one abortion.
http://www.w-cpc.org/abortion/emotion.html

If you really want to know why the family:-Fathers, Mothers and the ‘Unborn’ are being attacked just read Feminist Legal Theory - by Babette Francis.

“Hence for contemporary feminists it is not enough that women have as equal a right as men to attend university or to apply for jobs. In the feminist thought system, women must also have access to abortion on demand, because pregnancy may prevent or delay a woman going to university, and a baby may be an impediment to her career. Women must be made as "impregnable" as men”.

http://www.ecn.net.au/~mra/page24b.htm

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Back street abortions illustrate need for free, safe and legal abortion services in Ireland

Comments (1 of 1)