In Northern Ireland, women still face prison for having an abortion

LONDON -- In England, Scotland and Wales, women have access to free, safe, legal abortions. But, across the Irish Sea in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, women face prison sentences if they buy the very same medication used in legal abortions.

Though there are echoes of Donald Trump's statement that women who have abortions should face "some sort of punishment"; for one 21-year-old woman in Northern Ireland this punishment became a reality Monday when she was handed a suspended prison sentence for using "a poison" to self-abort.  

The woman, who was 19 at the time of her arrest, couldn't afford to travel to England to get an abortion care, and instead bought abortion pills online following the advice of an abortion care clinic. Describing her as a teenager who "felt trapped", her lawyer said that if the woman had lived in any other part of the UK she wouldn’t “have found herself before the courts”. 

"A woman in the UK has been convicted for a medical procedure that is free everywhere else in the UK."

Abortion rights campaigners say the woman is a victim of Northern Ireland's "draconian" abortion laws.

"It is repulsive that in 2016 in part of the UK, and in part of the developed world, a woman has been prosecuted for taking drugs that are on the World Health Organisation's essential medicines list," says Mara Clarke, Director of the Abortion Support Network, a charity that helps women in Northern Ireland travel to England to get an abortions.

"In Northern Ireland, only women who can afford it are able to travel elsewhere in the UK to get an abortion," she told Mashable. 

"By prosecuting women for taking safe abortion medicines, they are saying 'women with money, you can determine when you want to have children', but 'women without money, you're screwed'."

"Women who haven't had access to the pills have resorted to drinking bleach to induce an abortion," says Clarke.  

"Some women throw themselves down flights of stairs, they take multiple packs of hormonal birth control, and they Google the term 'ways to self-abort'. So, thank god these pills exist, because what would be the alternative?"

"I recently had a mother of four tell me that she was looking into ways she could crash her car to bring on a miscarriage without losing her life."

Clarke says making abortion illegal doesn't stop them from happening, it just stops it for low-income women. Her belief that women from low-income backgrounds are being punished by Northern Ireland's abortion laws is echoed by the Fawcett Society. 

"Online abortion medication is sadly for some women their only option – and they are being punished for lacking the financial means to travel," a spokesperson for the Fawcett Society said. 

 This is deeply unjust and, as Justice Horner [Northern Ireland's attorney general] recently stated, smacks of one law for the rich and one law for the poor."

Genevieve Edwards, Director of Policy at Marie Stopes UK, an NGO providing safe abortion services, said has serious risks.

"Those with money pay to travel to countries with fewer restrictions and use private abortion services. Those without money are forced either to continue with a pregnancy they don’t want or to take risks with their health and liberty by getting illegal pills online without medical support," says Edwards. 

Abortion in Northern Ireland

Under a 1967 act, abortion is legal in Britain, but this piece of legislation doesn't extend to Northern Ireland, where it can carry a life sentence. 

Hundreds of women travel to England from Northern Ireland each year to obtain abortions, and hundreds more women buy abortion pills, such as mifepristone and misoprostol, according to Clarke and a spokesperson for the Fawcett Society.

Despite the High Court in Belfast ruling in November 2015 that Northern Ireland's abortion ban is “incompatible with human rights”, Northern Ireland's devolved parliament Stormont has thus far refused to change the law.

In February 2016, Northern Ireland Assembly members voted against legalising abortion in cases where an unborn child has a terminal condition and will die in the womb or shortly after birth. The proposal to allow abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities was defeated by 59 votes to 40.

Moving forward

Abortion rights campaigners are calling on politicians to repeal Northern Ireland's "antiquated, Victorian laws".

"They need free safe legal abortion in Northern Ireland right now. Northern Ireland needs to come in line with the rest of the UK and it needs to happen now," Clarke told Mashable.

"It is time that we made our abortion law fit for the 21st Century," said Sam Smethers, Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society. 

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