When having an abortion makes you a criminal

This Friday the 26th of February, the people of Ireland will take to the polls to elect a new government. One of the topics needing urgent attention is the country’s highly restrictive abortion laws.

In the tourist travel book my boyfriend had when he first came to Ireland it warned “don’t start conversations with Irish people about abortion or religion”. That was ten years ago and not much has changed.

Abortion was illegal in Ireland in all cases until 2013. Current legislation only allows for abortion in cases where there is a risk of loss of the mothers life. However, criteria to qualify for abortion under the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 are very restrictive.

This time last year, Independent Socialist Clare Daly proposed an amendment to the law, to allow for abortion in the case of fatal fetal abnormalities. Just to be clear, we are talking about pregnancies in which there is no chance that the baby will survive the birth. Sounds logical right? This bill was defeated by 104 votes to 20. This means that heartbroken women in this situation are forced to carry their dying baby in her body for 6, 7, 8 months. “When are you due?” “Do you know if it is a girl or a boy?” usually innocent questions are in this case unanswerable. It means that these mothers go through the torture of feeling her baby move and knowing that they will never take a breath. She has to suffer the mental strain of wondering every day how much pain her unborn child is suffering. She is left with no other choice than to go to another country to undergo a procedure with no aftercare, no counseling, and to come home empty-handed with no body to bury.

The 2013 change came about partly in response to the avoidable death of Savita Halappanavar caused by the restrictive abortion laws. Mrs Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant in October 2012 when she was admitted to hospital suffering a miscarriage. In the last seven days of her life she repeatedly requested an abortion for her dying baby. She was told “this is a Catholic country” and her request was denied based on the fact that the fetus still had a heartbeat. By the time her miscarriage came to a natural end four days later and the fetus was removed it was too late to save her life.

Ten thousand people attended a rally in Dublin in memory of Savita Halappanavar in November 2012. Pics by William Murphy via Wiki Commons

The media storm and Pro-Choice protests following Mrs Halappanavars death lead to the first legislation in Ireland allowing abortion. However, this legislation only allows abortion if the woman is at death’s door. Only if the pregnancy could end her life is she considered for the procedure. How ill do you allow someone to become before you start calling the four experts needed to make this decision? How close does she have to come to dying? These questions are not easy to answer and that is horrifically evident in cases that have arisen since the 2013 ruling.

In 2014 a teenage immigrant, raped and 8 weeks pregnant, requested an abortion on the grounds that she was suicidal. As required by the 2013 law, experts confirmed that she was indeed suicidal and judged her life to be at risk. However, the government used her legal status to delay and hinder the final decision. Her request for termination was refused and the girl went on hunger strike. In an attempt to save the life of the fetus, a caesarean section was performed against the girl’s wishes in the 25^th week of pregnancy. This was 17 weeks after she first sought an abortion. Her extremely premature baby has been placed into care.

The law states that a pregnancy can be terminated if there is a risk to the life of the mother. But what if the mother is already dead? Should the pregnancy then be terminated? The law states that the fetus has equal right to life as the mother. In November 2014 an Irish woman, 14 weeks pregnant, fell and hit her head. On the 3rd of December she was declared clinically brain dead. Because her doctors were uncertain about the legal rights of her fetus, her body was placed on life support against the wishes of her family. In the 26 days that followed her family fought for her right to die. Her doctors refused to switch off her life support for fear they could be prosecuted under Ireland’s strict abortion laws. On the 26th of December in a ruling contrary to Irish constitution, the High Court decided that the life support machines could be switched off.

So even if there is a proven risk to a woman’s life, or if she is already dead, there is no guarantee that she can access termination services in Ireland. These are just two stories of women who actually qualified for abortion under the current law.

What about the women who do not qualify? The victims of rape and incest? The women carrying babies with fatal fetal abnormalities? The cases of failed contraception? What options do they have?

The modern day equivalent of the clothes hanger is abortion pills ordered on the internet. As you can imagine this is a very dangerous route to take. You have no idea what you are taking, if it is deadly poison or if it will have the desired effect. If it goes wrong, it is difficult to take the step to a hospital or doctor as you have broken the law. Anyone who orders termination pills on the internet or assists anyone in doing so runs the risk of 14 years in jail.

Since 1992, pregnant women are protected from prosecution if they travel abroad for an abortion. The Thirteenth Amendment states that the state shall not limit the freedom to travel of a woman. Imagine that, grown women being allowed to travel. On the same day in 1992 The Fourteenth Amendment was approved, allowing freedom of access to information with respect to abortion in other countries. Previous to this, Family Planning Centers faced prosecution if they provided any information in relation to abortion services in other countries. In a time before the internet this must have put a lot of women in dangerous situations.

Every day 13 Irish women travel to the UK for an abortion. That is over 5000 women per year who leave their support network and home to undergo a medical procedure that their country denies them. In a heartbreaking testimony Dr Susan Cahill tells how the Irish laws around abortion impacted her life. One of many Irish people living abroad, Dr Cahill discovered she was pregnant when visiting Ireland for a month. Unable to receive the medical care she needed in her home country, she was forced to remain pregnant for that month before returning to Canada to get the procedure there. What is heartbreaking about her story? That her country made her feel like a criminal. That she could not tell her family. That she was made prisoner in her own body. One detail of her story that struck a cord with me, that the clinics in the UK offer a reduced price to Irish women to help compensate for the travel costs. The clinics in the UK care more about the women of Ireland than the Irish government. That is heartbreaking.

Protest March in Dublin, March 2014. Pic via iStock

One in every six people born in Ireland currently lives in a different country. Ireland has the highest percentage of people living abroad worldwide. If the Irish government of tomorrow wants their educated youth to ever come back they need to address this issue. From what I can follow from the election coverage online it seems that politicians are avoiding this topic like the plague. It is time that the Irish government started taking women’s health seriously.

I hope that the people of Ireland consider the candidates stance on abortion when casting their vote. Abortion is a medical procedure and only doctors and patients should decide if it is a suitable option in any situation. The government and church have no place in this conversation. A pro-choice slogan that has been going around for years comes to mind: “If you don’t agree with abortion, then don’t have one.”

The hashtag you need to follow for tweets on this topic is #repealthe8th. You can follow the General Election developments with #ge16 on twitter. You can read Irish women’s abortion stories on this site. Frighteningly the stories from 40 years ago differ little from those of today. If you would like to help, you can sign Amnesty International’s petition asking Ireland to change its abortion law.

Tanktop via Look Human
Featured Image: Dublin, September 2012, Dublin March for Choice via iStock

Previously published on Charlie Magazine.

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In search of what makes me Irish

“You know, an immigrant is just someone who used to be somewhere else.” said comedian Russell Brand. Whatever you think about the refugee crisis and migration, we have to admit he has a point.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am an Irish immigrant who has been living in Belgium for ten years. I am an Irish citizen but not a Belgian one. I am a Belgian resident but not an Irish one. My nationality, that’s a difficult one.

Being an Irish citizen but not resident, means that I cannot vote in any Irish election or referendum. This seems very unfair to me, as I view Ireland as ‘my country’. It was particularly painful in the case of the recent Marriage Equality Referendum, which I would have loved to be able to support. When asked “Why should people who don’t live in the country have a say in what happens here?”, the only reply I could think of was “Because I’m Irish”. But what does that mean?

Who is Irish?

If either of your parents is an Irish citizen born in Ireland, then you are automatically an Irish citizen, irrespective of your place of birth or whether you ever set foot in the country. It is interesting to compare that to my position in Belgium. I have been living here for 10 years. I speak the language. I am integrated into Belgian customs and culture. But I am not a Belgian citizen.

According to brief research in my family, place of birth is not the deciding factor in how you feel, empathise, or associate with the people, history, culture and traditions of nations. My mother was born in Scotland and I’ve never seen her wearing plaid or eating haggis. Living in Belgium has not made me feel less Irish. I can only conclude that being Irish is about feeling, about culture, about being part of a tribe. It is about knowing the personality and behaviour of a group of people and feeling at home.

Emigration has played a greater role in the story of Ireland than immigration,  in the USA and in countries like the UK, read the uk points based system for immigration purposes. As a country on the periphery of Europe, inaccessible by land, Ireland has not seen the numbers of immigrants more southern European countries have experienced. However, people have been leaving Ireland for hundreds of years. The Flight of the Wild Geese is a term used to describe 120,000 Irish soldiers who left to serve in continental European armies in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. There was an Irish regiment in the Spanish Army of Flanders in the 1580s. Typically Irish names beginning with ‘Fitz’ originate from this time frame, ‘Fitz’ meaning ‘bastard son’ in French. The Great Famine of 1845-52 caused Ireland’s population to fall by 25%. More than a million Irish people emigrated during this time, an estimated 1 million to America and 200,000 to the U.K. Most recently, following a crash in the Irish economy, more than 200,000 Irish people left Ireland over the last five years. A study recently showed that Ireland has the highest percentage of native-born population living abroad.

That goes a way to explaining why the world is full of Irish bars. Irish people have been setting up shop all over the world for centuries. The population of Ireland is about 4.5 million at the moment. It is estimated that there are 70-80 million people in the world with Irish ancestry.

A least 22 presidents of the United States of America have Irish ancestral origins. Including Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush. Wikipedia tells me that Beyoncé, Elvis, Tori Amos and Muhammad Ali all have Irish roots. Some people would say that these and the 80 million other Irish descendants are all ‘Irish’, that they belong to the tribe. Irish people are proud, and always happy to claim a success story as their own.

How can you be proud of the place you just happen to be born in? How can you be proud of the soil under your feet? How can you be proud of your ancestors? Their achievements and actions are not ours. The people living in Germany or Belgium today do not feel personally guilty for what happened in Auschwitz and Congo. In the same way it is strange to feel personal pride in relation to the history of your country.

Yet I do feel proud to be Irish. Ireland’s successes feel like mine (like winning the Eurovision Song contest more than any other country ever). This kind of nationalist pride is considered dangerous and extremist in Belgium. In Ireland it is accepted and feels normal, we want to show the world how lovely we are. Visit any festival in the world and you are sure to see people flying the Irish flag.

Belgium seems happy to fly under the radar, to convince the world that chocolate and beer are the only things you need to know about us. Belgium is afraid of that feeling of national pride, because here it mostly comes adorned with a lion tattoo. I understand that side of the story too, of course, one of the things Ireland is known for is ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland.

No amount of rational thinking has changed my gut feeling about being proud to be Irish. I realised how deep the feeling ran when I became angry at a comment from an Irish acquaintance. “You can tell by looking at him that he is not really Irish”, an off-the-cuff remark directed at my (then) 2 year old son. My half-Belgian, half-Irish son. The first person on my family tree that does not have two Irish parents. My son who looks exactly like my dad. It hurt my feelings in an unexpected way.

At the end, I guess you are what you feel you are. When you look at it that way it seems silly to judge or separate people based on where they come from. Nationality is not something you can satisfactorily prove with paperwork alone.

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The first book I reached for while researching this article was the dictionary. (OK it wasn’t actually a book. It was the internet, but same difference.) These terms sometimes seem interchangeable but I needed to know exactly what they mean. We all need to know what they mean.

• Refugee: A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.
• Immigrant: A person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country
• Asylum seeker: A person who has left their home country as a political refugee and is seeking asylum in another.
• Foreigner: A person born in or coming from a country other than one’s own. A person not belonging to a particular place or group; a stranger or outsider.
• Citizen: A legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalised. An inhabitant of a particular town or city.
• Resident: A person who lives somewhere permanently or on a long-term basis.
• Nationality: The status of belonging to a particular nation.
• Nation: A large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory.

Previously published on Charlie Magazine.