Tag Archives: contraception

Activism and Agitation

Answering questions about Abortion as Contraception & ‘Unrestricted’ Abortion.

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I Vlogged again.

Some of the questions I got from people in the bar after the launch of Roscommon for Yes were about Abortion as Contraception, ‘Unrestricted’ Abortion at 12 weeks and
Drs opting out.

Abortion as Contraception:

We know from the stat which Bpas clinics keep and report to the NHS that the majority of people who have an abortion in the UK, were using contraception when they became unintentionally pregnant.

https://www.bpas.org/about-our-charity/press-office/press-releases/women-cannot-control-fertility-through-contraception-alone-bpas-data-shows-1-in-4-women-having-an-abortion-were-using-most-effective-contraception/

Also after having an abortion the same as after a miscarriage or giving birth you can not have sex for 6 weeks. I guess this is not a well known fact as people haven’t tended to talk about abortion.

Also with the plans for free contraception for anyone who needs if a person accesses abortion care they will be informed of this, and when in other countries made abortion legal and they have had free contraception, the abortion rate dropped, this is what we need in Ireland, this is part of the plans Minister Simon Harris has proposed as this is what the Joint Committee recommended.

 

Drs Opting Out:

Drs already can opt out of prescribing contraception and the morning after pill, it is called the Conscientious Objection clause. This will also apply to abortion services.

 

‘Unrestricted’ Abortion at 12 weeks:

Well this one is simply not true.  What the Joint Committee recommended and what is being put forward after we Remove the 8th Amendment, is 12 weeks ‘unrestricted to reason’ which means what ever reas on a person has for wanting to end a pregnancy that is reason enough.

There are restrictions, there is a proposed 72 hour, 3 days waiting period, there are medical restrictions, not just what the pregnancy has to be under 12 weeks of pregnancy (10 weeks fetal gestation), that is is carried out in line with best medical practice and that it is the right type procedure for the pregnant person. As Safe as the abortion pills are they are not suitable for everyone.

There are legal restrictions too, abortions will only be lawful in the first 12 weeks if a person goes to their dr or a family planning clinic or hospital and it is carries out in line with and under the restrictions of HSE policy. Ordering abortion pills from online places will still be illegal, carrying out back street abortions will still be legal.

Abortions after 12 weeks and before 24 weeks (6 months which is the limit of viability) will be even further restricted, it will only be in the cases of Fatal Fetal Abnormalities, and when there is a serious risk to the pregnant person’s Health. Even then it will take two drs to make the assessment.

 

So tomorrow I am off to Maynooth to MC the Maynooth Together for Yes fundraiser gig in the Duke and Coachman. Then on to Galway and then Kilkenny.

I will keep updating as I go, if you have questions you’d like me tackle please get in touch, leave a comment, or email me or, get in touch on twitter.

 

Again Thank You to those who Donated to my GofundeMe and made this possible.

 

 

 

Activism and Agitation

Abortion Rates

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Countries which make abortion legal & bring in free contraception always see abortion rates drop. Right now we have no idea what the complete abortion rates for people living in Ireland is. This is due to a number of factors.

Not everyone who travels to the UK gives an Irish address, some will give the UK address of a friend or family member. Some people travel to The Netherlands & again don’t give an Irish address but a friends or family members address. Some travel to other countries but only the UK & the Netherlands report back stats of those who gave an Irish address.

Both & have given stats about the number of people who contact them, but again we don’t know how many are actually using the abortion pills. Some people may order them and then choose not to take them as they have had a change or circumstance.

Anytime you hear/read statements about increased abortion rates, remember we only have a guestiment of current numbers. But we do know, as in Switzerland making abortion legal + free contraception = low rates of abortion.

And free contraceptive services for anyone who needs them was recommended by the Joint Oirteachtas Committee and is part of the plans Simon Harris as Minister for Health will be putting in place.

So after we Vote Yes on the 25th of May we need to let the Minister and our TDs know we support Free contraceptive services for everyone.

This is one of the posts created with the support of my go fund me campaign.
Thank you
Activism and Agitation

The Myth about Teenagers and Abortion

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The Minister for Justice on a recent interview on Newstalk, was asked about the UN’s Economic & Social Council’s recommendation to have a referendum on abortion.

 

http://www.newstalk.com/Justice-Minister-says-her-priority-is-not-on-holding-an-abortion-referendum

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights report states that Ireland must reform it’s abortion laws, including having a referendum however the Minster stated that she thinks the focus should be on crisis pregnancies and lowering the number of teenage crises pregnancies.

The Minster said that doing so would take education on the matter, however it is Minster Frances Fitzgerald who needs to be educated, on how teenagers from Ireland who access abortion in the UK are the minority of the women who travel. These statistics are easily available, the Irish Family Planning Association has them up on their website. https://www.ifpa.ie/Hot-Topics/Abortion/Statistics

UK Department of Health Stastics 2014UK Department of Health Stastics 2014 Teenagers - 20 and over

Graphics by @jamesfbrophy

 

Teenagers made up less than 8% of women that travelled last year, and the numbers for the last 12 years show that teenagers have not been the majority.

 

2014

This is a myth which we must bust, that it is irresponsible young women who have abortions. When the facts are that no contraceptive method is 100% effective and the most recent statics from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service show that more than half of women (54%) who use their services (including women travelling from Ireland) have already given birth.

Even if we did have contraception which was 100% effective there would still be unintended pregnancies, as those who perpetuate sexual abuse do not check to make sure their victims are using contraception and no woman should have to be on contraception just encase they become a victim of sexual abuse.

Even if we could wave a magic wand and every pregnancy would be an intended pregnancy, there are still reasons why abortion maybe needed, due to the risks to a woman’s health not just her life and in cases of Fatal Fetal Abnormalities when a woman does not wish to continue the pregnancy.

We do need a referendum to Repeal the 8th amendment before we can bring in any Abortion Rights, so that women no longer have to travel to the UK, often being separated from family when they need support.

We do need education about all of the many reason’s why abortion is part of health care.

We do need education about how early access to abortion is best for women and the majority of abortions carried out in the UK are before 10 weeks, with the abortion pills which women should be able to access here via their GP.

We do need education to stop the spread of the absurd myth that it is mostly teenagers who access abortion services, esp by our Ministers.

 

 

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Mrs Mary McGee and her spermicidal jelly.

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http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/anniversary-of-family-planning-case-brings-a-sense-of-d%C3%A9j%C3%A0-vu-1.1382006?page=1

The generation that takes Durex in the local Spar for granted may not know that 2013 is the 40th anniversary of a legal case that won them the right to use contraception. In 1973, 27-year-old Mary McGee challenged Ireland’s ban on family planning.

A mother of four children, she had complications in her previous pregnancy and was told that having another child would put her life in danger. On medical advice, she ordered spermicidal jelly from England (a criminal offence at the time) but it never arrived because of the amazing vigilance of Irish Customs who seized her package.

“I got a letter to say that because of the prohibition, my package wasn’t allowed in. I couldn’t believe it,” says McGee, sitting in her kitchen at home in Skerries recounting the story. “I just thought ‘no way, I have to do something about this’, not realising the enormity of what I was taking on. I think we were all ready for change though. People wanted children but they also wanted a life.” She took her case to the Supreme Court and won.

Mad to think if she and her husband hadn’t of been brave enough to take the case all the way, how much longer it would have taken to make contraception legal here. Still the 1973 ruling only made it legal for married couples by prescription, it wasn’t until 1983 it was extended to un married people and it was only 1994 condoms became over the counter and eventually in vending machines and shops.

So thank you Mary McGee for fighting for your spermicidal jelly and the right it eventually gave all of us.

Activism and Agitation, Press

3somes and Blowjobs and Liveline, Oh my!

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This week flew in with the kids being on Easter break so I’ve not written about this yet, but sure hear goes.

Yes I was on national radio this week for the first time, such was my ire at at the attitude on Liveline that I emailed the show. The segment was about the fuss Michelle “Fornication” Mulherin TD raised over one of the many articles on http://spunout.ie/.

For those of ye who don’t know what spunout.ie is, it is a website aimed at 16 to 25 year olds.

SpunOut.ie is a website dedicated to helping you make informed decisions about things which may be happening in your life. It is also a place to have your voice heard about things which are bothering you or to provide solutions to some of the big, or small, problems facing Irish society.

SpunOut.ie provides young people between the ages of 16 and 25 with the information and skills to deal with the difficult things life throws at us and lends a megaphone for our voices to be heard to change our own lives and the world.

An important part of SpunOut.ie is to give a voice to those who wish to tell their story in order to demonstrate to others that they are not alone, and that we all experience similar difficulties through the course of our lives.

We publish articles on sex, mental health, alcohol + drugs, education, employment and much more.

They are a registered charity and get a funding grant from the HSE which contributes to covering some of their over all costs.One of the many articles on the site was about 3somes, the pros and cons and addressing the facts. The notion that any tax payers money was being used to ‘promote’ 3somes to teenagers had Mulherin outraged.

It seems to have outraged some of the listeners and callers to Liveline also. I had been following the story about Spunout.ie from the night before and while I am not a regular live line listener I did tune in and got so cross that I emailed the show stating I am a stay at home Mam in my late 30s, with two teenage kids and I support the work Spunout.ie do.

They emailed me back asking for my phone number and then one of the production staff rang me and I was asked would I go on the show. Here is the podcast, I am on the last 10 minutes.

http://podcast.rasset.ie/podcasts/audio/2013/0325/20130325_rteradio1-liveline-controvers_c20177046_20177056_232_.mp3

Yes I did say, anal sex, oral sex, 3some and the phrase ‘promoting blowjobs’ live on national radio to Joe Duffy, who doesn’t intimidate me at all, sure he grew up in the same part of Dublin as my Dad and is about the same age and all. I did ring and tell my parents afterwards, as a polite heads up and they laughed and said they were proud of me.

You see back in the mid 80s they ran parenting courses in primary schools for other parents, including the sex educational model and they have always been advocates of sex education, so I didn’t lick it off a stone.

When I listened to the podcast when it went up I was happy to have been able to plug some more helpful sites where people can get information. I mentioned the sex ed program the HSE put together but has a difficult time distrubting to parents the first section of it is Busy Bodies
 aim at parents and children before puberty and I also mentioned The Facts and the other programs which can be gotten for free, which the HSE have spent money on.

I also mentioned that the NHS in the UK spends money on Sex Education websites http://www.respectyourself.info/ and I mentioned http://www.scarleteen.com/ as good resources for young people, so much better at them learning about sex and sexuality then just by looking at porn.

Looking back I am glad I took part on the program, as Amanda Palmer has said “We are the Media” and we do have to challenge the the notion that Ireland is still a very conservative catholic country and part of that is having our voices heard, even on Liveline.

And having had Joe Duffy say “That if you are asked to be in a 3some, just say no.” still makes me laugh.

Activism and Agitation

Well it only took 20 years, public advertising for condoms.

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It has been 20 years from when condoms were made legal for sale which did not require a prescription. But there has been still so much taboo and stigma surrounding sex and sexuality in this country that we haven’t had the same sort of advertising which you see in other countries.

This weekend I saw my first bus shelter advertisement for condoms,
here in Dublin.

IMAG0973 IMAG0972

Couldn’t believe it, but there it was an ad for Durex, the ad it’s self it eye catching and smart.
The text reads “The closer we get, the more our hearts race.”
With a small image of the branded box in the corner.

I think it’s classy and well done, and not a poster I would have an issue standing beside late at night in the city center, while waiting for a bus home. Well done TMW and this is the film ad for the campaign.

Activism and Agitation

GP-based care must be central to abortion law

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GP-based care must be central to abortion law.

‘How will I find a thousand euro in two weeks?” The mother of three looked at me with a mixture of panic and despair. “We have Communion coming up and absolutely no money as it is . . .”

This woman’s face stays with me. It is the face of many Irish women as they learn the cost of an abortion in England. It is a face injured by the silent bite of austerity, while already coping with a job loss or mortgage default and now an unwanted pregnancy.

Affluent Irish women have always had abortions. They continue to exercise their right to travel. However, for many Irish women the right to travel now counts for very little. It is the feasibility of travel that is important and this is substantially determined by the availability of money.

Desperation, always a feature of Irish abortion, is now the dominant emotion felt by many women. Ask yourself how would you access €1,000 in less than two weeks without telling anyone the reason you needed the money?

The complete absence of any of the voices of the more than 150,000 Irish women who have had abortions was a striking feature of the Oireachtas hearings last month into proposed abortion legislation as a result of the European Court of Human Rights A, B and C ruling. The lack of a public voice obscures the fact that abortion is not a rare experience for Irish women.

I often wonder how many GPs actually do referrals for abortion,
legally they can, but how many actually do, or do they push women towards positive options or the IFPA, but is it know that over 1/3 of women who travel to the UK contact BPAS themselves with out going through services here first.

Activism and Agitation

Rape, Abortion and Emergency Contraceptives

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Last month a poll was released via the Sunday times which showed that 74% of those who took part stated that if a person is pregant from rape they should the right to an abortion, that is an abortion here in Ireland.

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And then we had the interview of Micheál Martin leader of Fine Fáil by http://www.thejournal.ie/ in which he states;

He also said that he would not favour widening legislation or changing the Constitution to include cases where a woman has become pregnant as a result of rape.

“Rape is a particularly difficult one. We do have options today that we didn’t have before in terms of the morning after pill and so forth,” he said.

Which says to me just how disconnected he and his party are on the reality of this issue.

With X Case legislation still not even a published bill after 21 years,
and with all the scaremongering about ‘floodgates’ and women lying about being suicidal to obtain an abortion, I would fear as to what would be said if we were currently trying to legislate for the right to an abortion if a person has been raped.

Would women be told well prove you were raped and to wait for their rapist to be prosecuted, when currently from when a person is charged with rape it could be 18months before the first day in court. I worry that there is a vested interest in trying to make any abortion legislation to be a series of hoops to hard to navigate and so well will continue to have 12 women a day traveling to the U.K.

The comments also show up the ignorance about the ‘morning after pill’ which I really wish we could stop calling it that as the new ones can be taken up to 120 hours later, time to start calling it emergency contraceptive, but even then it is not 100%.

Even if a person reports the rape and sees a dr with in 72 hours or even 120 hours emergency contraceptives are not 100% effective and they can still end up pregnant from that rape.

Which assumes they can get to see a medical professional who will prescribe it, that they can take it as there are women from whom it won’t be prescribed due to medical conditions and there is a barrier due to cost or having to travel or child care, or they could be in an abusive relationship were it’s just not possible for them to get away.

And that is with out going into those who go into shock and denial after they have been raped.

So the existence of emergency contraceptives does not solve the issue of people becoming pregnant after they have been raped.

I guess after all this time I am still staggered by the lack of knowledge out there about Emergency Contraceptives & contraceptives in general. I honestly think that our TDs should know better then the lack of knowledge Micheál Martin has displayed.

Activism and Agitation

My Abortion Activism

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My abortion activism goes back about two decades at this stage, I used to write the Women’s Information Network’s illegal abortion information phone number 01 6794700 on the blackboards of the 6th year classrooms early in the mornings before anyone else was in.

Needless to say this caused uproar in the convent school I attended: when teachers and the head nun had an inkling it was me I was told to present myself at the office when I arrived each morning. They were going to use the absence of the number to prove it was me and someone else started chalking it on the black boards and it started to appear on the cubicle walls in the toilets in the school.

This was back before the 1992 referendum which made information related to abortion legal. I grew up in an Ireland were magazines were censored and so were UK phone books all over the country, long before it was possible to look up information on the internet. I have been pro choice having seen what family members went through in an Ireland which didn’t talk about miscarriage and treated unmarried mothers badly.

Even after the 1992 while information wasn’t censored, only drs and counselors were to give information to women who were looking for it and that is still the case to day. Before anyone could google B.P.A.S. and get information giving information verbally or a booklet or a photocopy could get you into legal hot water.

When I went to college I got even more involved in pro choice activism, I continued to act as an information point for women*. I had gotten my hands on a bunch of booklets “Traveling to Liverpool: a guide for Irish women” which were produced in 1994 and some activist training and would use them to help women, from teenagers to women in their 40s who didn’t know were to go, were too far away from the I.F.P.A. clinics and so would try their luck with the local college.

This was often a risky adventure, there were those in the college esp the college nurse who opposed me doing this, she was involved with the local Cura Branch and I had heard of other people who were giving out information that they would try and record me. If I wasn’t sure I would arrange to meet people and then accidentally leave behind pages with info on them after saying I could not help.

I also traveled with women over the years and if I didn’t travel with them checked in with them after wards, to make sure they took it easy, so many students who lived away from home during the week would travel and come back to digs or rented house and needed someone to make them tea and listen.

I remember the name of every person I helped back then and when they traveled and some for years later I would get a card or mostly an email to the address I had back then to say thank you or just to have someone who knew to communicate with. So many women edit out that time in their life from their narrative. They box it off don’t think about it, don’t talk about it ever, to anyone and go on to have partners and start families and it’s never mentioned. Not even when dealing with medical professionals in maternity hospitals.

Even after college it didn’t stop, I left an email address with certain people and they would refer people on but soon it was possible to search for information on the internet, but I still ended up being a point of contact and information and the same when I got involved in online communities, way before even bebo. Even in those places when I would talk about the topic in general women would contact me privately to share their stories.

My abortion activism has always been part of my sex education, contraception and Choice activism. I have passed on information on adoption and supports for being a single parent as well over the years but when there were so few places to get abortion information and support most of my first contact encounters over the year have been about abortion.

So many women over the years have shared their stories with me, easily close to 100,
but they would only be `not even .1 % of the 150,000 Irish women we have stats on who have traveled to the UK.

These days there is more information and support but hopefully the day will come when we don’t have to travel.

* I use the term women in my post not to be exclusionary, but as I have not yet knowingly had a transman talk to me about their story or approach me for information.

Helpful links if you need them.

www.ifpa.ie
www.positiveoptions.ie
www.bpas.ie
www.mariestopes.org.uk
www.abortionsupport.org.uk