Una Mullally is an award-winning journalist with the Irish Times, author and broadcaster. She is the author of In the Name of Love, an oral history of the movement for marriage equality in Ireland. She lives in Dublin.
For all of the women who have travelled for abortions, for all of the women who couldn’t afford to, for all of those who have told their stories, and for those who kept those stories to themselves, for all of those who are campaigning for women’s reproductive rights in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and for those who have gone before us who did the same. For all of those who have suffered under the Eighth Amendment, our liberation is near.
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Introduction
A Short Timeline of the Reproductive Rights Movement in Ireland
1 Personal Stories
2 ‘Laundry’ by Mary Coll
3 ‘The Question of Consent’ by Anne Enright
4 ‘What is a Woman?’ by Aisling Bea
5 ‘Abortion, Regret and Choice’ by Kitty Holland
6 ‘History Lesson’ by Elaine Feeney
7 ‘I don’t know what I thought abortion would be like . . .’ by Caitlin Moran
8 ‘Infinite for Now’ by Sinéad Gleeson
9 ‘We will win because we have truth and right on our side’ by Colm O’Gorman
10 ‘We Face This Land’ by Sarah Maria Griffin
11 ‘We Marched and We Will March Again’ by Louise O’Neill
12 ‘Kelly’s Story’ by Mark O’Halloran
13 ‘The obvious explanations of how power is held and exercised over women are very basic’ by Ailbhe Smyth
14 ‘The Important Thing is That We Start a Conversation’ by Lisa McInerney
15 ‘On Northern Ireland’ by Siobhán Fenton
16 ‘Heartbreak’ by Emmet Kirwan
17 ‘To Be Included and Heard’ by Ellie Kisyombe
18 ‘Three: three’ by Tara Flynn
19 ‘Strange Fruit’ by Nell McCafferty
20 ‘The Us’s’ by Una Mullally
Credits
Acknowledgements
Supporters
Plates
Copyright
UNA MULLALLY
In the midst of social change, what stories do we tell ourselves and each other? And do we remember them? Right now in Ireland, there are conflicting narratives about what kind of place we are and what kind of place we can be. What do we want to consign to the past and what do we want to preserve? What are we fighting for? The movement for women’s reproductive rights in Ireland is a long and bitter one. It is also inspiring. Within that movement there are multiple narratives, but what is clear is that art, literature and design have emerged from the movement, and continue to do so. When this battle is over, that’s a legacy worth preserving and reflecting on.
When social movements progress and realise their goals, what came before – the t-shirts, the badges, the essays, the poems, the placards – get put in drawers and in attics. No longer necessarily serving a purpose, the wave of art that pushed forward debate and stories and thoughts recedes. But this art is what colours a movement.
This book is an attempt to document the aspects of a movement that are often forgotten when its goal has been achieved. It is not a history of the movement for reproductive rights in Ireland, nor an academic study. It is not polemic nor a debate. What it does try to capture is the art, literature, design, personal experience, poetry and journalistic writing that have developed out of or been inspired by the movement for reproductive rights, particularly centring around the campaign to remove the Eighth Amendment, the Irish constitutional ban on abortion.
In this book, you will find reflections from writers, artists, journalists, campaigners and people who have personally experienced, at a very visceral level, the impact of the abortion ban in Ireland, and also the thoughts and visual articulations of those who engage with the impact of those laws.
Our art and our conversations are products of our environment. The acts of expression related to our restrictive abortion laws at this time take many forms. They are murals on walls and ideas for poems; they are essays and personal stories; they are screenplays and short stories; they are textile designs and photography; they are graphic design and things we need to get off our chest. This collection of work is free-flowing, and purposefully chooses a thematic narrative over a linear one. The movement itself is both personal and collective political and social, and we discuss it with humour and with tears, anger and meditation. It is both abstract and concrete. As a result this anthology is purposefully inconclusive. It aims to both directly address the issues and reflect upon them.
It is difficult to have a perspective on something that is ongoing. But when civil rights campaigns achieve their goals, the narrative of their history always becomes a point of view. This book attempts to capture the energy, articulated through art and discourse as it happens. Some pieces directly address certain issues; others offer a broader assessment of our environment and social history.
Although the midst of progress can sometimes feel characterised by backlash, resistance and conflict, Ireland is experiencing a wave of social change that is driven by multiple generations; those who have stayed the course and fought for civil rights for decades, and a new generation agitating with righteous impatience for a country that reflects them.
Like many people, I was indoctrinated by the Catholic Church in school and at mass to believe that abortion was evil. As I grew older, the process of shedding that indoctrination was revelatory. My memories of how sex and reproduction were spoken about in school are hazy; visiting nuns talking about black marks on our souls, or equating our souls with the water used to clean our classroom paintbrushes – how one dirty brush could soil the whole jar. There were sensational lectures about abortion, using language I knew to be inflammatory, and later learned to be totally inaccurate. Sex was dangerous, to be feared, certainly not spoken about with adults beyond the classroom context of anatomical drawings of penises and wombs in biology books. The violent anti-choice language and imagery followed us around. It took up space on placards on Shop Street in Galway or outside the General Post Office in Dublin. I am thirty-four years old. This is not ancient history.
At sleepovers in friends’ houses – sober, skittish ones first, then tipsy teenage ones – the secrets of families unravelled. We all had them; the older female relatives sent away to Magdalene Laundries, places for ‘fallen women’ or ‘Mother and Baby Homes’, or who had babies taken from them. Travel just a branch or less down the average Irish family tree, and you’ll find these repeating patterns: the systematic imprisonment, punishment and forced exile of our own women; the illegal child trafficking; the abuse and torture. Occasionally the especially abhorrent, especially cruel, especially tragic stories make it into the headlines, but for every one of those, there are thousands more, the white noise of the subjugation and oppression of women.
The greatest oppression does not have to be meted out by some ferocious dictator. We do it to one another, to ourselves. The collusion in how the bodies of Irish women have been policed – how lives have been destroyed, sometimes ended; how women in Ireland have been systematically punished for daring to be sexual beings – stinks of guilt and shame and secrecy.
Central to this grotesque misogyny and patriarchy has been the ultimate resistance to female independence and autonomy: denying women the right to decide when they want to reproduce, denying women birth control and access to abortion, and placing into the constitution articles that amplify a woman’s ‘life within the home’ and a ban on abortion that equates a woman’s life – a real, lived life – to that of ‘the unborn’.
The State 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.
This is the Eighth Amendment, article 40.3.3. I was born in 1983, the year the Eighth Amendment was introduced to the constitution. Abortion had been illegal in Ireland since the foundation of the State, whereupon we adopted the British 1861 Offences Against the Person Act. In the 1960s, when abortion was legalised in Great Britain, Ireland lagged behind, the social backdrop – conservative lobbyists, a conservative society, and a then still strong Catholic Church – providing the momentum for a constitutional referendum to reinforce a ban on abortion that would be difficult to untangle.
One of the first times I voted was in another referendum on abortion, in 2002, which was an attempt to exclude the risk of suicide as grounds for abortion, and strengthen the constitutional ban on abortion. It was defeated.
The awakening of Irish generations is far more rapid now, as information is more accessible and connections can be made with others who are fighting similar battles. Both inspired by and immersed in a new wave of feminism, as well as acutely aware of how progress made on women’s rights continues to be reduced across the world, the movement for women’s reproductive rights in Ireland has taken on an energy that is unstoppable.
This anthology is one part of a much larger canon. Not here are the countless other plays and poems and stories and performances and photographs, the private pieces of writing that no one will ever see, diary entries and letters to lovers and friends and family members, the words spoken late at night after a bottle of wine with friends. There are so many things unsaid. So many stories remain hidden in Ireland, swept under the carpet, nudged into the shadows, silenced out of shame and pain.
At the time of writing, Ireland continues to deny women living in the country, North and South, basic bodily autonomy, basic rights, basic healthcare. The art that has emerged from that denial is urgent and sad, it is poignant and pointed, but it tells a story that we can’t forget, even after the Eighth Amendment is removed. This art is of us and speaks to us. It is both reflection and a rallying call. Its existence is necessary, but the goal is that it does not exist at all. For now, let’s tell those stories.
A struggle is at its toughest when breakthroughs are imminent. It’s often at that point that the most crucial art emerges. As this anthology shows, it takes many forms, but all of it is an expression of a time and a place. Our society and its faults inform our art and literature and conversations and thoughts. When we remember it and reflect on it, we are remembering an aspect of social history that will hopefully soon feel outdated, but today is the here and now.
1828 Offences Against the Person Act 1828
Section 13 laid out the death penalty for ‘post-quickening’ abortions.
1837 Offences Against the Person Act 1837
Section 6 made it an offence for ‘pre- or ‘post-quickening’ (the moment in pregnancy when the pregnant woman feels foetal movements) terminations, but abolished the death penalty set out in the 1828 Act for abortion.
1861 Offences Against the Person Act 1861
Section 58 and 59 of the Act label procuring an abortion offence (‘procure her own miscarriage’), and supplying instruments or poison for an abortion (‘procure the miscarriage of any woman’) an offence.
1935 Criminal Law Amendment Act 1935
Section 17 outlawed the sale, advertisement, importation etc, of contraceptives to Saorstát Eireann (the Irish Free State).
1945 Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland)
Section 25 criminalises abortion with the offence of ‘child destruction’.
1968 The Abortion Act 1967 comes into effect
Legalises abortion in all of Great Britain, but not Northern Ireland.
1969 Fertility Guidance Company Ltd
The first ‘family planning’ clinic in Ireland was established in Dublin. It later became the Irish Family Planning Association.
1971 The Contraceptive Train
A group of Irish feminists travelled from Dublin Connolly train station to Belfast and back with contraceptives, challenging their illegalities in the Republic of Ireland.
1973 McGee v. Attorney General
A Supreme Court case which conferred a right to privacy in marital affairs. It was brought by Mary McGee, a woman who was instructed to use a diaphragm and spermicide as birth control, due to her endangering her own life should she get pregnant again (she had four children at the time). The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1935 prevented her from getting a prescription for birth control.
November 1980 The Health (Family Planning) Act 1979 comes into effect
Regulates the sale, importation and prescriptions for contraceptives: ‘A registered medical practitioner may, for the purposes of this Act, give a prescription or authorisation for a contraceptive to a person if he is satisfied that the person is seeking the contraceptive, bona fide, for family planning purposes or for adequate medical reasons and in appropriate circumstances . . . ’
19 March 1983 Sheila Hodgers dies
Hodgers, a woman from County Louth, died from cancer two days after giving birth to her third child. Following breast cancer surgery, while she was still taking medication, she became pregnant and stopped taking medication, as the medication could harm the foetus. She was refused painkillers and a caesarean section. She gave birth on 17 March and the baby died. Hodgers died two days later from multiple cancers.
September 1983 The Eighth Amendment referendum
A bitterly divisive referendum campaign concludes with a vote on introducing the Eighth Amendment into the Irish Constitution. The amendment confers equal right to life to a mother and a foetus. 66.9 per cent vote for the Eighth Amendment, 33.1 per cent against.
October 1983 The Eighth Amendment signed into law
Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution of Ireland read: ‘The State 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.’
January 1984 Ann Lovett dies
Lovett, a fifteen-year-old girl, died while giving birth beside a religious grotto in County Longford. Her baby also died.
1985 Condom sales liberalised
An amendment to the Health (Family Planning) (Amendment) Act 1985 allowed spermicides and condoms to be sold to people over eighteen without a prescription in certain outlets.
1988 SPUC v. family planning counsellors
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) challenged Irish counselling agencies for providing women with information on how to communicate with abortion clinics abroad under Article 40.3.3. The High Court Case AG v. Open Door Counselling and Dublin Wellwoman Centre prevented those agencies from helping women by providing information about how to obtain an abortion abroad. SPUC also took cases against student unions doing the same.
1991 The IFPA fined for selling condoms at the Virgin Megastore record shop in Dublin
1992 The X Case
A landmark Irish Supreme Court case that established the right of Irish women to abortion if the life of the pregnant woman was at risk. The case involved a fourteen-year-old girl, known as ‘X’, who was raped by her neighbour and was suicidal. Before travelling for an abortion, the girl’s family asked the Irish police (Garda Síochána) if DNA from the aborted foetus could be used as evidence in a court case against the neighbour who raped the girl. The Attorney General then sought and received an injunction against the girl travelling to have an abortion. This injunction, granted by the High Court, was appealed to the Supreme Court and overturned, establishing that a pregnant woman had a right to an abortion if there was a risk to her life, including suicide. The girl had a miscarriage shortly after the judgement was made.
November 1992, Three more referendums
Referendums are held on the Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of Ireland. The Twelfth Amendment sought to state that the risk of suicide should not be a reason for a legal abortion. The Thirteenth Amendment addressed the freedom to travel out of the State, and that travelling for an abortion should not prohibit this freedom. The Fourteenth Amendment was about the right to distribute information about abortion services outside of Ireland. The Twelfth Amendment was rejected, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth passed.
The Thirteenth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment are inserted into the Constitution of Ireland as subsections of Article 40.3.3, regarding the right to travel for an abortion, and the right to receive information on abortion in other jurisdictions where terminations are legal, adding to Article 40.3.3.
‘This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state.’
‘This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available, in the State, subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law, information relating to services lawfully available in another state.’
1995 Regulation of Information (Services Outside the State For Termination of Pregnancies) Act
The act that governs how information about the availability of abortion outside of Ireland is made available.
March 2002 Another referendum
A referendum on the Twenty-fifth Amendment proposed again that suicide not be grounds for legal abortion in Ireland. The attempt to tighten Ireland’s abortion laws further failed, with 50.42 per cent voting against and 49.58 per cent voting for.
2005 The IFPA sued the Irish government in the European Court of Human Rights
On the grounds of right to privacy on behalf of three women who were forced to travel outside of Ireland for terminations.
2010 The European Court of Human Rights found in favour of the IFPA
The European Court of Human Rights found the Irish government had violated the European Convention on Human Rights with regards to the IFPA’s 2005 case and was ordered to pay damages.
July 2012 The Abortion Rights Campaign is founded
Initially named the Irish Choice Network
October 2012 First March for Choice
The first March for Choice organised by the Abortion Rights campaign is held in Dublin, leading to annual marches and simultaneous rallies and actions in cities all over the world over the next six years (at the time of writing).
October 2012 Savita Halappanavar dies
Halappanavar died in a hospital in County Galway after complications from a septic miscarriage. She asked for a termination, which was refused by the hospital. The baby was stillborn on 24 October. Halappanavar died 28 October.
January 2014 The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 comes into effect
Allows for legal terminations where pregnancy endangers a woman’s life, and repealing Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
2014 Ms Y
The story emerged of a young asylum seeker, Ms Y, who arrived in Ireland pregnant after being raped in her home country. Suicidal, she went on hunger strike. At twenty-five weeks pregnant she delivered a baby by caesarian section in August 2014.
December 2014 Miss P
A woman who was brain-dead after suffering head trauma, and who was eighteen weeks pregnant, was kept alive against her family’s will until the High Court ruled that doctors could switch off her life support machine.
2015 Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment
A coalition of groups to advocate for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment is founded, creating a growing alliance of over one hundred organisations.
April 2016
A twenty-one-year-old woman in Northern Ireland was given a suspended sentence when her housemates reported her to police after she used abortion pills bought online to induce a miscarriage.
June 2016 Repeal Project
The Repeal Project is founded by Anna Cosgrave, creating the iconic black and white sweaters. Several other pro-Repeal grassroots groups emerge including The HunReal Issues, Strike4Repeal, ROSA (for Reproduction rights, against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity) and more, continuing to build on activism for reproductive rights that has been ongoing for decades.
March 2017 Abortion pill raids
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) raid premises, including a workshop of a pro-choice campaigner, on International Woman's Day, searching for abortion pills.
April 2017 Citizens’ Assembly
The Citizens’ Assembly, established to examine the issue of abortion laws and the Eighth Amendment and make recommendations to the Oireachtas, votes overwhelmingly that abortion access should not be regulated by the constitution and instead should be legislated for.
September 2017 Referendum on the horizon
The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar proposes that a referendum on the Eighth Amendment be held in May or June 2018.
Autumn 2017 Committee on the Eighth Amendment
A joint committee established by the Irish houses of parliament convenes to consider the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly and to hear from experts on the issue, with a view to reporting to the Oireachtas regarding abortion and the constitution.
Series of personal stories in collaboration with the X-ile Project and the Repeal Project.
I have a child already, a beautiful, intelligent little girl who I would not give up for the world. I had her quite young, but abortion was never an option for me. She was mine and I loved her right from the first moment I knew I was pregnant. I want to get this across first, as I feel that people really don't understand that abortion is situational. This was my situation with my daughter but, sadly, situations change.
In December 2015 I discovered I was pregnant upon finishing a highly abusive relationship. I had been suffering from depression for three years preceding this and had got myself mixed up with a horrible man. My depression had led me to this situation; not thinking right, being with a man I shouldn’t have been with and having unprotected sex. People can say women shouldn’t get themselves pregnant and then they wouldn’t need an abortion, but can a woman who is suffering from a mental illness really be held accountable? I think not. If I were living in a country that allowed abortion, I could have gone to a clinic and closed this chapter of my life safely and with dignity, but sadly I don’t. In fact, because abortion is illegal, I am lucky to be still sitting here to tell my story.
Having got the positive result, I sought out options for abortion online. As a single parent I couldn’t dream of having another child. It wasn’t about me any more; it was now about my daughter, I couldn’t allow her life to be changed so drastically because her mother had been careless. I went online and researched abortion, but it was too expensive for me to travel and I wouldn’t be able to find the money. I did then what most girls do; I found an abortion-pill website. Over the coming days I spoke to the women there via email. They were very helpful and made the process so much easier. I thought I had found my solution; all I had to do was drive to Belfast, get the pills, take the first one and I would have ended this chapter in my life.
However, a week before the pills were due to arrive, I began to bleed. It wasn’t much, just a small amount. I thought to myself it would just end the pregnancy and that would be that, so I ignored it. After a few days, though, I thought I may as well get a check-up. I knew I wasn’t keeping the baby, but I still had another child to think about and I needed to be healthy. I booked an appointment with the local maternity service, told them I was around four to five weeks and had bleeding, and they booked me in for a scan on that basis.
There was nothing to see in the scan. The nurse quizzed me on dates, but all the bloods checked out – I was pregnant, but there was no baby to see.
After three internal scans and a lot of discomfort, I was told it was an ectopic pregnancy. The pregnancy hormone levels were still rising, which meant the foetus was still growing and my fallopian tube could rupture at any point. For this reason I was booked in for emergency surgery the same day. You can imagine my dismay at going in for a scan and ending up in an operating room, having never had an operation in my life. I underwent surgery that same day to remove my fallopian tube and the pregnancy on medical grounds, which is deemed appropriate in Ireland.
I know some hearing my story will think I got what I wanted – an abortion in Ireland that was deemed medically viable – but this certainly was not a dream situation for any woman to experience.
If I had not had the courage to go to the hospital and have myself looked at, I would have taken those pills and thought the abortion was complete, but the pregnancy would have continued to grow regardless. These tablets do not cover ectopic pregnancies, meaning I could have died from a ruptured fallopian tube and subsequent blood poisoning.
If abortion was legal I could have gone to an abortion clinic, been seen, told it was ectopic pregnancy and had everything treated right there and then. Instead I had to put my life on the line, completely unaware that the foetus growing inside me could kill me.
It angers me to think any woman will have to go through what I went through and maybe even worse. I am lucky to have escaped with my life. If I had made it to Belfast and taken those pills, who is to know what could have happened? I am so thankful I had enough courage to go to the maternity service and have it looked into, but who is to say another woman will be as lucky? Going to have a check-up with other expectant mothers joyfully rubbing their bumps while you sit there feeling like a fraud isn’t exactly a thing many women seeking abortion will do. This is putting their health at risk, but the shame our society inflicts on women seeking abortion keeps them from having a check-up. I felt so embarrassed and ashamed as I waited to be seen, but am so thankful I did it.
My story is tough, as I got into it at a time when I wasn’t thinking clearly, but what woman does think clearly when dealing with an unplanned pregnancy? This country is putting women’s lives at risk by not allowing them proper healthcare when it comes to abortion. Things happen, mistakes happen, women should not have to suffer so much pain and mental torture to regain control of their bodies. Abortion is not for everyone, but no one should be denied the choice. It was once not for me, but when I truly needed this service, I wish it could have been something my country allowed me.
I was twenty-seven. I was living in Ireland, and me and my boyfriend got pregnant. It wasn’t planned at all. In fact, my doctor had told me that I might need to have hormones to get pregnant. I was kind of worried to tell my boyfriend, because we had never talked about what we would do if it happened, but he agreed with my decision to have an abortion and was supportive.
I would have done it in Ireland if it was available there, because the flight was very expensive. The procedure itself wasn’t. It’s not expensive in Sweden. My mom came with me and everyone was really nice. For me, having an abortion maybe wasn’t as scary to someone who was Irish. There was no fear on my part whatsoever. I told my dad too. He was supportive, but he also knew there would be no point in not supporting me!
I don’t think people should take the decision to have an abortion lightly, and it’s a decision that affects you a lot, but it’s something that should be available for everyone. The decision was something for me to make, not for society to make. If you don’t feel like you’re suited to be a parent, you should have a choice.
Sara Falkensjo, interviewed by Rosita Boland in an extract
from an Irish Times article