Two thousand women leave Northern Ireland every year to have their pregnancies terminated. Some of them borrow from loan-sharks or sell off personal effects to finance these trips. They ll stay in miserable B&Bs across the water and will often tell lies when the clerk at the clinic asks them for their home addresses.
They ll return without taking up the option of post-abortion health checks. They ll forgo any form of counselling after the operation. Most women will arrive back, pretending they ve had a nice weekend away, rather than admit the actual purpose of their journey.
Because of the cost, many will travel late in their pregnancies, increasing the trauma of the move. A large quota will travel alone, to save on expenses. Others will settle for a backstreet abortion in Ulster, which was available as recently as 1992 for the knock-down price of #120. Significantly, at least five women have died in Northern Ireland since 1967 as a result of illegal abortions.
Every commentator regardless of his or her moral convictions on this issue agrees that the law is a disaster in this respect. At least 40 women travel east every week from this part of the United Kingdom to another, because the treatment they want isn t made available to them at home. And yet abortions are being carried out in the province s hospitals, albeit secretly.
These so-called therapeutic terminations are offered by the NHS when there is some degree of foetal abnormality. The legal basis for such an operation is loosely justified by an old ruling (the 1939 Bourne case), but it s the doctors, as opposed to the lawmakers, who are making this work. There are other precedents that allow abortions to be carried out in Northern Ireland if the woman is suicidal, or has a low IQ (the test case girl had one of 61). But there are few guidelines and virtually no statistics to show how widespread this selective process might be.
Meanwhile, doctors worry about the possibilities of civil or criminal action being brought against them, while anti-abortion protesters picket The Brook Advisory Centre in Belfast, an organisation which aims to provide advice about contraception for young people. The Brook Centre claims that it is not an abortion referral organisation that issue is dealt with by The Family Planning Association and the Ulster Pregnancy Advisory Association but the pickets and preachers still gather outside their North Street offices on a Saturday.
Everywhere, there s mistrust, misinformation and a dearth of any public debate. It is now 30 years since Northern Ireland was left out of the UK Abortion Act. No-one reckons the Act will be extended in the near future. In the run-up to the British elections, there will be little mention of this issue. Of all the local parties, the only intimations of a possible pro-choice agenda have come from the Progressive Unionist Party.
In 1981, the Labour Party assured the public that it would extend legislation to areas which are not currently provided for in Northern Ireland, such as abortion, homosexual rights and education. That promise has not been kept under the new party regime.
The traditional Ulster Unionist view is best reflected by a speech from David Trimble MP: My own view is that abortion should be a matter of last resort where it is clearly necessary and we should take care to avoid creating the abortion on demand situation that has resulted in England from the operation of the Steel Act.
Joan Wilson works with the Ulster Pregnancy Advisory Association. She recognises the dogmatic style of the Ulster polititians, and bemoans the lack of any strong initiative since 1967.
We export the problem to England, that s what we do. In the past 30 years, there s been nothing I ve seen or read that makes me think any differently. It s the same old situation, I m afraid.
getting violent
Patricia Masters was 25 and training as a nurse in Belfast when she discovered she was pregnant. She had access to medical information that was denied to other people, and so Patricia decided to travel to Scotland, where some of her family lived. She could stop over at Glasgow, have an NHS abortion, meet relatives afterwards, and no-one would know any different.
I didn t have to go private, which was a Godsend. Patricia freezes for a moment in her front room in Bangor, Co Down, before then correcting herself. Well, it wasn t a Godsend when I look back on it now. But that s how it was at the time when I was going through it.
She remembers the date of the termination: 22 November, 1979. Afterwards, she relocated to Scotland and fell into to what was later described to her as Post Abortion Syndrome; destructive behaviour, a reliance on alcohol and prescription drugs and recurrent nightmares. Her worst dream pictured herself in a shop. Outside, a baby was crying in a pram. But every time she ran out, the pram was empty.
She became involved in British Victims Of Abortion, and received counselling. Her response was to take up religion and to give the unborn child a name, Claire, and a distinct identity. She now feels that Claire has been committed to God . She related her experiences in a book of similar confessions from traumatised women, . . . And Still They Weep: Personal Stories Of Abortion.
Patricia has returned to Northern Ireland. She runs her own counselling service and has received more than 40 calls since Christmas. Sometimes, women call in the middle of the night and then hang up, too frightened to take the situation any further. There are so few opportunities to talk about abortion, and Patricia understands the problems that occur when emotions are allowed to well up.
Women who have had abortions haven t had permission to grieve, she states. This baby was there but it s not there now. If it s a still-birth, you would have a chance. But because the abortion is supposed to sort out all your problems, it s like you ve had it, and that s that. You don t talk about it any more . . .
I don t think abortions should be allowed to be carried out at all. In my belief, life is God s gift and nobody has any right to take that gift away. Somebody has to speak up; everyone s talking about the choice of the woman or the man . . . the way it s gonna affect the economy with all these single parents and babies and stuff . . . but these babies don t have mouths of their own, and somebody has to stand up for them. So I m totally pro-life and I m not ashamed to say that at all.
So what about the more confrontational pro-life protesters, like the pickets at the Brook Centre?
I know the man from SPUC (The Society For The Protection Of The Unborn Child) who stands outside there every Saturday. He doesn t protest; he just stands there and hands out leaflets. He s not doing any harm to anybody.
But I disagree with the way people are getting violent. That doesn t solve anything you can put your point across without having to be violent outside an abortion clinic. What state of mind are the women in anyway? And the last thing they need is for someone being that way. You should be some help to the people who are going in. Anything else just encourages people to put you down you re not getting anything across.
blind eye
Audrey Simpson, sitting at her desk in the offices of the Family Planning Association in Belfast s University Street, is also reasoned and soft-spoken. However, she differs with Patricia on the perceived morality of the issue, and talks of the feelings of shame and guilt that accompany the women on their trips to England and Scotland.
You re doing something which your society has deemed illegal, so you are nearly being forced to think of yourself as a criminal. The bottom line is that all women in Northern Ireland are being discriminated against, because they do not have parity of esteem with the rest of the women in the UK. They don t have access to the NHS services that other women in the UK have. So if you live in Bangor, Co Down or Bangor in Wales, you do not have the same level of accessibility. But yet we are part of the United Kingdom.
So is there any sign of change after 30 years?
The line that we have gone along as an organisation is, let s review the legislation, she explains. You need to set up an independent commission, comprising of representatives from the churches, the medical profession, legal and women s groups, plus the Government and look at the law and clarify it once and for all.
Because there s an absence of a democratic political process in Northern Ireland, that impacts on decisions that are made around social issues. Because abortion is such a sensitive issue, we can t get any politicians to take it on board. Until we get some support there, it s very hard to move it.
If there s a change of government, maybe an independent review would be to the benefit of everybody. I don t see why people who are anti-choice are frightened of that.
I don t say to people if you re anti-choice, you re wrong . You have to respect people s opinions, and if people believe that abortion is wrong for them, that s okay, I don t have a problem with that. But it s also about respecting the wishes of women who choose to terminate their pregnancy.
And the bottom line is that there have always been abortions and there always will be abortions. But in countries where you make abortion illegal and this has been proven time and time again you push women into having unsafe abortions. That has proved to be the case in Northern Ireland since 1967.
In some African countries where abortion isn t legal, they do them anyway, and everybody just turns a blind eye, because they know if they don t, women will die.
night boat
In 1993, Simon Lee, Professor of Law at Queen s University Belfast, presented a paper for the Standing Advisory Comission on Human Rights. His work, sub-titled The Twilight Zone , exposed the many inconsistencies in the legal treatment of the abortion issue in Northern Ireland, and closed with a call for an informed debate .
One spin-off from this was the formation of a group called Alliance For Choice. Lee s ideas, combined with the furore over the X Case in the Irish Republic, convinced these fresh campaigners that there was a possiblility for change. AFC is most active in Derry, where it plans to capitalise on the upcoming election, as Goretti Horgan explains.
There s going to be one initiative, she says and that s writing to all the political parties and asking for their position on the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act. And if they re against it, why they re against women in Northern Ireland having the same rights as in England, Scotland and Wales.
Since the X Case in the South, it s been a lot easier here. People used to have a very black and white view all for or against, not people realising that there is a grey area; like, what would happen if your 14-year-old daughter or sister had been raped and was pregnant? At the time of the X Case, there were people in the streets in Derry, taking up petitions to the Southern Government, saying she should be allowed to go. That would never have been dreamt of in the past.
The main thing that Alliance For Choice has done is to have given a voice to the fact that all these women have had abortions. We ve got a poster coming out in the next six weeks a photograph of 40 women in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in England. As an act of solidarity with us they ve agreed to have their photograph taken specifically for this poster. This is saying 40 women like these go to England from Northern Ireland every week for abortion. Which is actually an amazing thing to do to let your picture be used in that way.
That s the statistic and the actuality that must surely bother everyone in Northern Ireland. Upwards of 40 women a week; a ghostly procession, their misery unvented. As many as 2,000 per year, a higher pro rata figure than the Irish Republic s estimated annual rate of 5,000. All of them deciding that their ultimate options involve either the night boat to Liverpool, or an away-weekend in a dirty old town. n
Selected reading: The Abortion Law in Northern Ireland Editor: Ann Furedi (Family Planning Association Northern Ireland, #4.95)
Northern Ireland Factsheet On Abortion (Family Planning Association, #1.00)
. . . And Still They Weep: Personal Stories Of Abortion Editor: Phyllis Bowman (SPUC Educational Research Trust, #8.99)