This is going to be my penultimate Women’s History Month post, and I want to take a moment to raise awareness of an issue that is often shrouded in secrecy and shame, and that is integral to women’s history. Even in Britain where abortion is (more or less)^[1] legal the women who dare speak up about having had an abortion are rare and brave.
In Ireland (both North and South), the picture is different entirely. Abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland, and constitutionally outlawed in the Republic of Ireland. So women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant and do not want to continue the pregnancy (they may be too poor, have too many children already, be in an abusive relationship, find themselves pregnant as a result of rape – there are as many reasons as there are women seeking abortion) have only one option – travel to England for a termination.
As abortions are not available on the NHS for either Irish or Northern Irish women, the significant cost of the procedure at a private clinic is added to the travel costs, the potential costs of childcare while away, and in some cases the costs of staying overnight in England.
In the 1980s a number of Irish women living in London got together to form the Irish Women’s Abortion Support Group. The history of the group is documented in Ann Rossiter’s “Ireland’s Hidden Diaspora”. Here are a few highlights.
The group was entirely unfunded/self-funded. Rossiter herself says they did “sponsored swims, sponsored walks, sponsored weight loss, and sponsored anything else we could think of.” The vast majority of the work of the group consisted of providing Irish women with information (not readily available, and at times illegal to obtain), overnight accommodation when they came over for the procedure, financial support, and also escorting them to the clinic.
This kind of “welfare feminism” (as Rossiter calls it) is an example of the way “women’s issues” are left to be dealt with by women – usually at great cost, with no support from the state, and in secret and shame. Like violence against women, unavailability of abortion is one of those areas where the cost is almost exclusively born by women. We raise the money, we support each other, we provide a sympathetic ear to our friends when they break down crying on the anniversary or their abortion, we keep the secrets, we get on with it – quietly, efficiently, out of the way of “mainstream society”.
Towards the end of the 1990s, as the Irish economy boomed and credit and low-cost flights became more readily available, the IWASG was wound down. With the recent economic crisis, however, Irish women are yet again finding it more and more difficult to raise the money to travel to the UK for a termination. Which is why the Abortion Support Network (ASN) started up.
I honestly can’t remember how I first came across ASN, though if I had to guess I would say it was through Twitter. I donated money to one of their appeals, and have been getting their monthly updates in my inbox ever since, a constant reminder of the continued struggle of so many Irish women for bodily autonomy. Reading the stories of women helped by ASN, and some of the stories documented by Ann Rossiter, the one thing that strikes me is how little has changed in 30 years. The guilt, the shame and the social stigma are all still there. But with every grant ASN makes, a woman gets her life back. And that is an amazing achievement for a small, chronically underfunded group of women operating on the fringes of society.

[1] Abortion in the UK is only legal to prevent a negative impact on the woman’s physical or mental health or if there are severe foetal abnormalities. Two doctors have to sign off a woman’s request for an abortion. While the guidelines are interpreted extremely liberally so that de facto abortion is available here on request, the legal situation is somewhat murky. Every few years, there is an attempt to further restrict abortion rights. There is, in fact, one going on right now. All this despite the fact that having an abortion is medically safer than carrying a child to term.