‘My ex never got over her abortion’… the surprising stories behind the young campaigners fighting to keep abortion illegal
The abortion vote is being presented as a battle fought between generations but as Ireland heads to the polls tomorrow, these young people reveal the moving stories behind why they're voting 'No'
THE war raging on the streets of Ireland is thought to be between the young people fighting for a woman’s right to choose and the religious zealots obsessed with the rights of the unborn child – but is that really true?
I went to the battleground of Dublin to find out.
Plenty of young campaigners plan to put their tick in the box to preserve the Eighth Amendment, which forbids women from having terminations unless their lives are at risk from the pregnancy.
Younger No supporters have been travelling around the divided country, erecting posters of dismembered foetuses on every street with slogans like “licence to kill” and “babies will die”.
They’ve even been known to mob pregnant women at maternity hospitals, wave placards saying “abortion is murder” and started prayer groups surrounding pro-choice stalls.
More than 80 per cent of Irish people are Catholics, a religion which forbids abortion – likening it to murder.
But, surprisingly some of the most passionate pro-life campaigners are young, urban and not even religious.
Here, we reveal the moving personal reasons why they don’t think women should be able to have abortions.
“My friend wouldn’t be here today if abortion was legal”
Hazel, a law student at Trinity College Dublin
Hazel has been campaigning for a No vote to save the Eighth Amendment.
“Being pro-life is the most logical position for me. I’m from a very pro-choice family. All of my family will be voting to repeal.
From the very first moment that I heard what abortion was, I just thought it seemed barbaric. I was actually surprised to find that people were campaigning in favour of it, because it seemed to be a very violent act.
I think that every human life has value, and I don’t think that value accrues at birth, I think it accrues at the point of conception.
Abortion is wrong because it takes the life of the human. That’s as simple as it gets.
We’re definitely in a minority at Trinity. There’s no question about that.
Our student union has a mandate to campaign for repeal of the Eighth Amendment and they do that in a very up-front way. So we have banners on the front gate, we have all our student-union representatives walking around wearing pro-choice jumpers, badges, and every single student-union office will have repeal merchandise on it.
We ourselves were not allowed to organise as a recognised society within Trinity: they told us it’s because we’re a single-issue group, and the societies committee doesn’t allow single-issue groups.
But they said we weren’t allowed to have a political stance – despite the fact that they are allowed to campaign for the political stance of repeal. It’s unfair, but we get around it.
I have a very good friend, his name is Gavin Boyne. His mother became pregnant with him when he was 15 years old.
She was sent over to England to get an abortion by her own parents, Gavin’s grandparents. But after three weeks of reflection, they decided that the life of this unborn baby had value, and agreed with the reasons for abortion’s illegality in Ireland.
So they brought her back. Gavin is alive because of the abortion law in this country.”
“My ex never recovered from her abortion”
John McGuirk, 38, from County Monaghan
Save the Eighth campaigner
“My ex-girlfriend got pregnant, and was shocked and unsure about what to do. She decided to keep the baby. She told her parents when she was about 12 weeks pregnant.
So that seemed fine and she continued in college. But then, when she was 20 weeks pregnant, she went home for her Christmas holidays.
Her mother said to her: you’re having an abortion or we’re cutting you off. They didn’t want her to have a baby so young.
She was English so they took her to a clinic and made her have an abortion at 20 weeks.
She never got over it. She dropped out of college shortly thereafter and ended up in a very bad way.
We don’t talk about how many women are forced into having abortions – it causes them so much psychological trauma.
She’s much better now but I’ll never forget supporting her through that. It was pretty horrendous.
When you legalise abortion, everywhere, in the way that it is in the UK and other European countries, the experience is that it goes from the last resort to being the very first option presented to a woman in a crisis.
You can recognise that abortions happen, but you don’t necessarily want to live in a country where they’re happening in plain sight.
I am often told, you don’t have a uterus. You’re a man, you shouldn’t have an opinion. Well, I spent nine months in a uterus.
I was, broadly speaking, genetically the same person at 12 days old, 12 weeks old, 12 years old as I am today.
If we interrupt somebody’s journey from nothing to something, we’re taking away their potential.”
“Abortion is medieval and never the answer”
Niamh ui Bhriain, 48, from County Cork
“[My friend] Catrina was 18 and still in school when she found out that she was pregnant. She told her friends, kept it hidden, and they said, look, you can go to England and get an abortion. That will be it, no one will ever know.
But it’s not so easy for an 18-year-old to jump up and go to England. And, inevitably, her mother found out.
I think it was a really awful moment. You can imagine how scary it would be to tell your mother, not only that you’d had sex with someone, but that you’re now pregnant. It’s a conversation you never really want to have at that age.
But her mother promised her that they would get through this – her family offered to help her raise the baby and give her everything she needed.
It was a wonderful story, she went back to school and managed to go back to college and got her nursing degree.
She brought up her daughter with the help of her family babysitting and living at home.
Catrina said if there was an abortion clinic in Ireland at that time, she could have gone and got the abortion without her mother even knowing about it.
That incredible bond that all three of them have – granny, mother and daughter – would have been lost because an abortion clinic was open.
We’re failing ourselves, our women and our babies by simply saying something as backward and medieval as abortion is ever an answer to an unexpected pregnancy.
I think at this point, in civilisation, if we’re still saying that the best we can do for women is to give them the opportunity to have their baby killed, we’re absolutely failing women. Everybody deserves a chance to be born.
We’re saying that you can dispose of human beings. To me, there’s something really wrong at the core of society.”