Over one hundred women in Northern Ireland have risked imprisonment by signing a letter stating that they have either taken an abortion pill or helped someone to procure one.

Unlike the rest of the UK, in Northern Ireland elective abortions are illegal and carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The National Health Service will only facilitate abortion in very extreme circumstances. Indeed, campaigners from the Alliance for Choice argue that it is almost impossible to access an abortion, even when a woman is legally entitled to do so.
“You cannot get an abortion in Northern Ireland if your health is in danger. Your life has to be at risk,” explains activist Goretti Horgan. “We know of women who faced losing years off their lives – people with cardiac problems, people with cancer – and they can’t get abortions. That’s why Marie Stopes opened in Belfast. They wanted to show that there were women who had a legal right to an abortion, but weren’t able to get one.”
The letter, initiated by Alliance for Choice, is a response to an attempted amendment to Northern Ireland’s Criminal Justice Bill, which was co-proposed by the SDLP’s Alban Maginness and Democratic Unionist Paul Girvan, and which was clearly aimed at preventing Belfast’s Marie Stopes clinic from providing non-surgical abortions in Northern Ireland. Thankfully, the amendment failed to achieve sufficient cross-community support and the situation of women is no worse than before. But that doesn’t mean that the prevailing status quo is acceptable.
“If the debate was opened up by the government, but also on a public level, people would realise that there is a real need to extend abortion rights in Northern Ireland,” proffers Natalie Biernat, a student from Derry and one of the signatories to the letter. “I don’t think it is any secret that many women in Northern Ireland have had an abortion. There is a massive stigma around it – but people know it happens.”
Over the years thousands of Irish women, north and south, have travelled to the UK to obtain terminations. But whether or not a woman is able to do so frequently comes down to money. Women on low incomes, or who are unemployed, may simply not be able to afford the costs associated with travelling to Britain and paying for an abortion. Even more poignantly, refugee women simply cannot leave the country. This is one reason why so many women have been looking instead to purchase abortion pills over the internet.
“The abortion pill has been a saviour,” says Horgan. “It means you don’t have to leave home, you don’t have find someone to look after your kids, you don’t have to make excuses as to why you’re disappearing for a couple of days, you don’t have to find £500 or £600.
“Instead you go to Women on Web. There is a doctor at the other end of the email. They go through your medical history to make sure there are no contra-indications. They then send it to you.”
As previously reported in Hot Press, the authorities in the Republic of Ireland have been doing everything in their powers to snatch the pills – despite the fact that medically it’s just one step on from the Morning After pill, which is widely available.
“It’s very complicated in the south,” Goretti agrees, “because the Irish Medicines Board have been seizing the pills for years now, and women have to go to all kinds of lengths to get them.”
Financial considerations prompt many elective terminations. Despite this, as campaigners note, Northern Ireland does not have a childcare strategy, while the proposed Welfare Reform Bill will significantly further disadvantage parents on lower incomes.
“More than half of all women from the North who travel to England for an abortion have at least one child already,” says Horgan. “It’s very often women who are married, or single parents, for whom another pregnancy is a disaster, particularly in the current economic climate, who decide on a termination.”
Northern Ireland’s restrictive abortion laws are in part prompted by the anti-sex ideology of various Christian faiths, allied to a related strain of misogyny, neither of which necessarily reflect the personal attitudes – and certainly not the behaviour – of the mass of ordinary people. As Horgan points out, 57% of all births in Belfast are to unmarried women – so clearly sex outside marriage is both widely practiced and accepted. But politicians and policy makers lag behind.
“Part of the reason we don’t have easy access to abortion in Ireland – north and south – is because of our dreadful attitude towards sex,” she observes. “And it is arguably worse in Northern Ireland these days. There is an attitude, ‘Yes women have the right to choose. They have the right to choose not to open their legs. What do you expect if you’re a slag?’ The stigma around abortion is very much about shaming women who have had sex and who enjoy sex.”
Biernat agrees.
“Women are not allowed to engage in sex unless they are married. For a lot of people who call themselves pro-life, pregnancy is seen as a punishment. In their minds it is, ‘You were dirty. You had sex. You have to deal with the consequences.’ That’s the mentality.”
In the final analysis, what the signatories of the letter are fighting for is the woman’s right to choose. Nothing less makes any sense at all.