Graham Linehan and his wife Helen have joined Amnesty International in their fight to change what they believe are "Ireland's barbaric abortion laws."
Talking today to The Guardian, the former Hot Press-er and Father Ted co-creator revealed that Helen underwent an abortion in 2004 after doctors informed them that the 11-week-old foetus she was carrying wouldn't survive outside of the womb.
“I don’t think it is safe for women in Ireland to be pregnant," Graham tells the newspaper. "Abortion is an important medical procedure and when that’s taken off the table, then you’re not safe. A place without abortion puts two lives in danger, not one.
“In Ireland, Helen would be a criminal to have undergone the termination. She would have had to carry the child knowing it would die in great pain shortly after she had given birth to it. I have always been very proud to be Irish but I am embarrassed by Ireland’s abortion laws. This is just something you can’t be proud of. It’s barbaric.”
The couple have collaborated with Amnesty on Chains, a Repeal The Eighth Amendment campaign film narrated by Liam Neeson.
"A ghost haunts Ireland, blindly bringing suffering - even death - to the women whose lives it touches," he gravely intones. "Ireland doesn't have to be bound to the past. It needs to repeal the Eighth Amendment of its constitution, and the other laws that chain women to the past and deny them their rights."