Rachel Donnelly and Garret Fitzpatrick report.
On 28th October, a group of pro-choice activists and politicians travelled from Dublin to Belfast, to collect doses of abortion pills that are illegal in the Republic, and returned with them on the train to Connolly Station in Dublin. Several activists and politicians took doses of the pills in front of the assembled media to demonstrate the safety of the drugs.
The action was organised by ROSA, Real-Productive Health and Action for Choice, among others, and was supported by Women on Web, a non-profit organisation that supplies safe abortion pills to women in countries where abortion is legally restricted, after an online consultation with a doctor.
Fiona Dunkin of Real-Productive Health said of the action: “[It] was very important in terms of highlighting the hypocrisy of the Irish state with regard to its exporting of the abortion issue. Thousands of women travel to the UK and elsewhere every year to access abortions. The numbers of those accessing the abortion pill is less well known.”
The protest was reminiscent of the famous Contraception Train of May 22nd, 1971, when 47 women marched into Connolly station in Dublin with various types of contraception they had bought in Belfast. Contraception was illegal at the time, but legal in the North, so the Contraception Train represented an open display of defiance against the laws in place in the Republic.
“Many women in Ireland are unaware of the existence of the abortion pill and the site Women on Web, as a much cheaper and easier to access route to reproductive choice. The dangers of the drug are also often sensationalised, as was seen, for example, in the recent Prime Time programme on the issue. I do feel it was vitally important in this respect; we cannot underestimate the lack of knowledge and misinformation that is propagated regarding this vital tool.”
The same day, 28th October, was the second anniversary of the death of Savita Halapannavar. Candlelit vigils attended by hundreds were held in Dublin and Galway to commemorate her death and remember her life. Cathie Doherty, spokesperson for the Abortion Rights Campaign and one of the organisers of the Dublin vigil, said:
“Because of the death of Savita, a lot more people became active in the struggle for reproductive rights. Progress in Ireland, so often, seems to march over the bodies of dead women. It’s really saddening that it had to take the death of this woman to ignite that kind of desire for change.”
“She was a real person. She’s not just a figurehead. She’s not just the reason that people are marching, not just the woman that died because of our laws. Often the women who are impacted by our laws aren’t Irish women. They’re migrant women, asylum seekers, refugees. So there is this national shame, I suppose, and rightly so.”
