I met an old friend this bank holiday weekend…

I met an old friend this bank holiday weekend…

We hadn’t seen one another in many years, so I was happy to sit with her for an hour in Phoenix Park; it was a sunny day in Dublin and we chatted for a while.

I asked her how she was holding up during the debates around the referendum, as I knew she terminated a pregnancy some time ago, and I just hoped that the news and the posters weren’t too upsetting for her.  She told me no, that this wasn’t the case at all.  Rather, she said she was going through a period of profound healing and growth.

Six years ago, my friend decided to terminate her pregnancy for a labyrinth of complicated and personal reasons.  At that time, she had asylum seeker status, so she was unlikely to get entry clearance for the UK, where she could have legally terminated her pregnancy.  So she decided to buy the unregulated, illegal, unsupervised abortion pill online instead.

She started to experience severe pains very quickly so wondered if she had read the instructions carefully enough.  English is not her first language so she wasn’t sure if she had done what she was supposed to do.  She also wondered if she was experiencing “abnormal” or “normal” pain as she had nothing to compare it to, and found it hard to contextualise.  At one point she thought she might go to the nearest accident and emergency department, because she was starting to feel faint and she started to panic that everything was going terribly wrong.  But she had heard that this illegal pill carried with it a 14 year prison sentence, and so postponed presenting to the A&E department for as long as possible.  When her brother found her unconscious on the bathroom floor, he very wisely called the ambulance, and possibly saved her life by doing so.

The excellent health workers cared for her for four days and then discharged her and she went home.  No one arrested her, but she lived with the fear that someone might, at some time, come knocking on her door, arrest her and send her back to her own country. She said she had lived with this fear for six years.

She told me, while we were sitting in the park on a sunny day in Dublin, that every time she sees someone wearing a badge with YES on it, or a t.shirt with the word REPEAL on it, she wants to kiss them gently on the cheek and say thank you.  She told me that for the first time in six years, she hasn’t felt like a criminal, but feels supported and cared for instead.  She told me that she believes the people of Ireland will vote with their hearts this time, and that one day, hopefully very soon, people in her position will be able to access safe, regulated and compassionate health care in Ireland.

This referendum is not about abortion, it’s about legislation that is hypocritical to its core, completely unfit for purpose and impossible to uphold.

Please vote YES on 25 May 2018.