Thursday, May 26, 2016

Diana King, 71, Colette Devlin, 68, and Kitty O'Kane, 69: Northern Ireland; Criminalizing women for procurement of abortion pills: 'Women Are Demanding to Be Arrested for Breaking Northern Ireland's Abortion Laws', reports VICE News..."The retired social worker, who has been campaigning for years to have the UK's 1967 Abortion Act extended to Northern Ireland, told the Guardian she would tell the authorities she had not committed any offence because the drugs are not "poisonous substances, but are seen by the World Health Organisation as essential medicines."The women knew going to jail was a possibility, she said, "but we will be saying that we don't think that we have done anything wrong." A Facebook post uploaded while the women were being questioned, reported by the BBC, said "People handing themselves in highlights the unworkability of the law. It lays bare the hypocrisy of the government and pressures the state to scrap it. "If the police wish to criminalize one woman for a crime that so many of us have committed, then there can be no exception to the law, we must be arrested as well... Prisons would be filled to the brim if the law was actually enforced."


STORY: "Women Are Demanding to Be Arrested for Breaking Northern Ireland's Abortion Laws," by reporter Miriam Wells, published by VICE News on May 24, 2016.

GIST:  "Three women handed themselves in at a Northern Irish police station on Monday evening hoping to be arrested for procuring abortion pills, in protest at the country's restrictive laws. To the cheers of pro-choice campaigners standing outside, Diana King, 71, Colette Devlin, 68, and Kitty O'Kane, 69, reported to Strand Road police station in Derry and gave officers a statement saying they had received mifepristone or misoprostol pills for women too afraid to have them delivered to their homes. The drugs can safely induce an abortion up to nine weeks into a pregnancy, but are illegal to take without a doctor's consent anywhere in the UK. In England, Scotland, and Wales, women can be prescribed the drug or receive a surgical abortion on the NHS, but in Northern Ireland all abortion is illegal except when a woman's life is at risk or there is a serious or permanent risk to her mental or physical health. Abortion is not allowed in the case of fatal foetal abnormalities, rape, or incest. Northern Irish women can travel to the UK to get an abortion, but are not eligible to receive one on the NHS so need to have £1,000 to £2,000 ($1,500 to $3,000) to spend on travel, accommodation, and private treatment. "We do now have one law for the rich and one law for the poor," said King in a statement outside the police station, reported the Derry Journal. "If you can raise the £1,000 to £2,000 to travel to GB [Great Britain] for a legal abortion no-one will bother you, but if you access the nine-week abortion pills online for £60, there's a climate of fear resulting from Stormont [the Northern Ireland Assembly]and the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] hounding women who are already at their most vulnerable. "I don't want to believe our politicians will let this continue, but I fear they will, so it is up to us to keep campaigning." The retired social worker, who has been campaigning for years to have the UK's 1967 Abortion Act extended to Northern Ireland, told the Guardian she would tell the authorities she had not committed any offence because the drugs are not "poisonous substances, but are seen by the World Health Organisation as essential medicines." The women knew going to jail was a possibility, she said, "but we will be saying that we don't think that we have done anything wrong." A Facebook post uploaded while the women were being questioned, reported by the BBC, said "People handing themselves in highlights the unworkability of the law. It lays bare the hypocrisy of the government and pressures the state to scrap it. "If the police wish to criminalize one woman for a crime that so many of us have committed, then there can be no exception to the law, we must be arrested as well... Prisons would be filled to the brim if the law was actually enforced." The women were questioned for about three hours before being released pending a report to the Public Prosecution office, said the BBC. Last June more than 200 people signed an open letter stating they had either taken abortion pills or helped women access abortion pills in Northern Ireland, and they were willing to be arrested. Police took no action, which is why King, Devlin, and O'Kane have stepped forward, said the Guardian — seeing themselves as good candidates to take proactive action as they no longer have jobs which could be adversely impacted by a criminal record."




The entire story can be found at:

https://news.vice.com/article/women-are-demanding-to-be-arrested-for-breaking-northern-irelands-abortion-laws

See also American Bazaar's story 'Donald Trump's punishment for women evident in Purvi Patel's case' at the link below; "Back in March, the presumptive GOP nominee Trump told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions. After intense backlash for the comment, Trump backtracked to say doctors or anyone else providing an abortion should be punished, not the women themselves. In a statement on his website, he said: “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.” He tried to further clarify his stance in an interview with The New York Times Magazine’s Robert Draper last week, saying women “punish themselves” and he didn’t mean they should be put in prison. Bustle noted that however, Patel’s case highlights the fact that often times, the woman and the provider are the same person. The 34-year-old was accused of buying medication online to induce an illegal abortion and neglecting a premature baby that could have lived. The state alleged that Patel gave birth to a live baby despite her consistent claims that she delivered a stillborn child, which constituted the additional charge of neglect. A 2009 Indiana law established stricter punishment for the death of a fetus in response to the murder of a pregnant woman, and prosecutors argued that it allowed them to charge Patel for feticide. “Because women with no other solutions end their own pregnancies, Trump’s claim that he would punish abortion providers, not women seeking abortions, isn’t any better for women than his initial statement that implied women would go to prison. When you end your own pregnancy, you become both the patient and the provider, so if performing an abortion is a punishable crime, women will absolutely end up behind bars,” noted Bustle."
http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2016/05/24/donald-trumps-punishment-for-women-evident-in-purvi-patels-case412615/

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The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:

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Harold Levy;

Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;