I have just watched the video attached to this Guardian article about the increase in Irish women seeking help for abortions abroad, and I am beyond myself with anger, frustration and disbelief. I know that this is what happens in Ireland; I know that it’s inhumane and barbaric yet allowed to go on, but sometimes I forget. Sometimes I forget, and then an article like this comes along and I feel like taking the next ferry over to Dublin and knock on the door of every Fine Gael and Labour TD and tell them about Oliver and show them that there is no sense, no reason, no high-held religious principle that can justify what goes on.
I want every woman and every couple to have the right to free abortion with no questions asked, and I know that such a claim can sound both extreme and unrealistic in a climate like that in Ireland. But all subtle nuances and gestational distinctions put aside, how anyone can listen to these women who wanted so badly to be parents, who lost their children, who were given no choice and who without even blinking can say that they would have welcomed a disabled child with special needs had that been their lot, who were forced to go through their grief being judged by their own society, and say that the current abortion laws in Ireland make sense – that is, like these women say, just barbaric, inhumane and completely crazy.
When couples are given no choice, when they are told that their baby has a fatal abnormality, sticking our heads in the sand and saying that abortion is wrong because an embryo immediately after conception becomes an Irish citizen does not lead to a world where more women carry a dying foetus to term and we can go on with a clean conscience knowing that nobody’s been killed, let’s not pretend that that’s what’s happening. What these laws are saying is pretty clear: we can’t be bothered to take difficult debates about life and death, a couple’s right to choose and a woman’s right to control her own body, so we throw equality out the window and make it all about class.
Under the current Fine Gael and Labour government in Ireland, and under all previous Irish governments, a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body is all about class. The fundamental right, as such, does not exist – but you can buy it. I never quite got my head around Fine Gael’s ideological stance, but that something like this can go on in the name of a modern Labour party, that’s both ironic and a bit hard to stomach. Can you afford to travel abroad for your horrific procedure? Then go, have it done; just don’t do it on Irish soil. We don’t want your morally complicated grief here. Can’t afford it? Well there you go – your dying baby is a dying Irish citizen. Watch and feel it grow.
