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/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses
several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of
the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this
powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and
myself get more out of the site.
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:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please
send any comments or information on other cases and issues of
interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com;
Harold Levy;
Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
