Hello, welcome to Irish Passport.
Let’s do it.
Welcome to the Irish Passport.
I’m Tim McInerney.
I’m Naomi O’Leary.
We’re friends. Cé he bhfuil tú Naomi?
Go hana mhaith ar fad, Tim. This is your passport to Irish culture, history and politics. I’m recording one, two, three.
Okay.
Hello and welcome back to The Irish Passport podcast.
Yes, welcome back, listeners. We have such an exciting episode for you today.
Yeah. Today we are delving into the fraught abortion campaign in Ireland, which is just about to vote on whether or not to remove its constitutional abortion ban.
Now, in a previous episode last year, we explained how this ban came to be put into the constitution back in 1983. If you want to go back and listen to that, would highly recommend it. But today, we are going to look at how things stand right now as the referendum heats up and we’ll be going on the ground to hear how the campaign is progressing.
Today, I’m taking a deep dive into the real battlefield of this campaign, which is social media. We’ll show how global, progressive and conservative forces are treating Ireland as a kind of battleground of the global culture war with echoes of the Trump and Brexit campaigns.
I’ll be asking Minister of State for the diaspora Ciarán Cannon why he is campaigning for the ban to be retained, even though the government he is part of has proposed the referendum in the first place to remove the Eighth Amendment. We’ll be hearing his response to this: If a woman returns to Ireland at the moment, she’s returned to a country –with legislation as it stands — where if she is carrying a foetus that cannot survive outside the womb, she has to carry that term or face a prison sentence. How can you tell women to return to a country where they have to live under that law?
And we’ll hear the story of one of Ciarán Cannon’s own constituents who has lived through the consequences of the policy he supports.
First, let’s refresh our memories about what exactly this is all about. The Eighth Amendment is part of the Irish Constitution, and it states that a woman has an equal right to life as an unborn baby or fetus. Now, in practice, that means that abortion is illegal unless the woman is going to die without one. And the only other option is losing both the mother and fetus.
Now, remember that this Eighth Amendment only applies to the Republic of Ireland. So abortion is also not legal in Northern Ireland, but that’s due to their own laws within the UK.
The Eighth Amendment was added to the Irish constitution through a referendum in 1983. And it was pushed back then by a coalition of right wing and Catholic affiliated pressure groups from both inside and outside Ireland. And since then, Ireland has remained this highly symbolic totem for right wing anti-abortion groups across the world who hold up Ireland as a Western example of a near total abortion ban.
Now, as we explored in that last episode, the Ireland that voted for the Eighth Amendment in the first place was a really different country from what it is now. So in that time, the Catholic Church was extremely powerful. It held a huge sway over public opinion, and it was long before the abuse and corruption scandals of the 1990s broke into the mainstream. So for many practicing Catholics of the day, illegitimacy and even contraception were often taboo topics. So abortion was way beyond the pale for many people.
It was also a time, we have to remember of mass immigration. Huge swathes of the young population had left the country, which not only led to fears of depopulation, especially in the countryside, but also left an unusually high proportion of older, conservative voters. And this was all compounded at the time, with the Troubles raging across the border in the north, turning many people against the idea of following what was seen as a British-style legislation on reproductive policy.
As it stands now, governments in Ireland are almost completely unable to liberalize abortion, while this is in the Constitution. So it’s caused a number of deeply controversial cases in which women were in very desperate circumstances. But successive governments have been reluctant to hold this referendum because it’s so deeply divisive. Even today, the two biggest parties, which are Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are not campaigning for one side or another but allowing their members a free vote.
It has come to a head, however, due to a number of pressures. And no one under the age of 53 in Ireland has ever had a say in this law. Since 1983, Irish women have been leaving the jurisdiction to access abortions. At least nine a day go to the UK, according to NHS statistics. The case of Savita Halappanavar galvanized the momentum for change. She turned up at a hospital, miscarrying a few years ago, and although her family says she repeatedly asked for an abortion, the doctor said they couldn’t intervene while the foetus had a heartbeat and she later died of sepsis.
Another factor is the reality that women in Ireland are now able to access abortion pills by ordering them over the Internet. They take them without any medical supervision.
Before we go any further, Naomi, let’s lay down the positions at play in this referendum.
Yeah, good idea. Let’s be clear about what a “yes” or “no” vote actually means.
So a “yes” vote means that there could be now change. The government has proposed bringing in legislation that would allow women to go to a doctor and ask for abortion pills without having to give a reason up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. They would have to have a scan to establish how far along the pregnancy was and have a three day cooling off period just in case they change their mind about it.
And how about after 12 weeks, Tim?
So after 12 weeks abortion would only be possible in cases of fatal fetal abnormality. So the fetus would have some condition that means it can’t survive outside the womb. Or if two doctors agree that there is a serious risk to the health or the life of the woman. Abortion would not be legal after the point of viability, i.e. after the point of the baby could survive outside the womb, which is currently about 23 or 24 weeks.
So in contrast then, if “no” wins that means there would be no change to the status quo. So in all cases, people who need abortion for whatever reason would have to travel, order pills online, or if neither of those is available because they don’t have the resources go without.
The referendum campaign is now in full swing. Canvassers are knocking door to door talking to voters and lampposts all across the country are covered in posters from both sides of the argument. Some posters have been torn down actually, which shows you how sensitive the topic is. I’ve seen that myself. I was in Ireland awhile ago and you would see posters appearing in the morning on lampposts and by the afternoon they would have disappeared.
So right now, polls show that the repeal side is ahead. So a higher number of voters in favor of getting rid of the Eighth Amendment and liberalizing abortion laws. However, their lead has fallen since the start of the year. And there are a large contingent of undecided voters who are likely to decide the outcome of the vote. So myself and transparency campaigner and journalist Gavin Sheridan have been digging into the fight for those undecided voters. And we found a trail that leads back to Houston, Texas.
Let’s hear from that report.
A few days ago, advertisments began appearing in front of Facebook users in Ireland. These were asked by a page called “Undecided on the 8th”. They read,” Yes or no? Unsure? Here are some unbiased facts to consider before you vote.” Users who clicked were brought through to a website Undecided8.org. which presented eight “unbiased facts” to consider. These facts weren’t really unbiased though. They used language like, “Abortion on demand”, which isn’t used by the pro-repeal side. Text on the website read, “If the Eighth Amendment is removed, fetuses will have no constitutional rights whatsoever.” This website was running scripts, identifying visitors by their Facebook and Google accounts. What that means is that anyone who visited could later be targeted with ads on Facebook and on Google. This is a signature tactic that was used in the Trump and Brexit campaigns. First, to identify the key, undecided voters and then you swamp them with advertising in the last crucial days of the campaign. So who was behind this website? The website itself didn’t say. It’s registration data had been made anonymous. The Facebook page had no information on who was behind it, but Gavin discovered a way to find out.
I’m Gavin Sheridan. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Vislegal, which is a legal intelligence platform, and co-founder of Right to Know, which is an access to information NGO. When you look at the source code of the website, what you can often do is find clues to who built the website. And in this in this example, they were using a third party service called Leadpages.
Within the website’s code there was a url, a website address.
The URL that they were using was this URL called cmg-parents.lpages.co.
That URL means that the website was using a Social Media Marketing service called Leadpages. It was a Leadpages’ subdomain. So one page that could be used by several sites, all run by the same Leadpages account. I know this sounds a bit technical, but just bear with me.
So what you can do then is I googled the URL and I say, “Well, what other websites has this kind of subdomain on Leadpages run?
That Google search revealed who else had been using that same Leadpages URL.
A Facebook page called the Catholic Church used it to urge men to sign up to join the Franciscan Friars of Atonement, a religious order based in New York. Another Facebook page called “Ask a Catholic Priest”, used the same URL to usher people to a website about joining the community of St. John. Both of these websites form the same logo in their lower right-hand side designed by Fuzati.
Hello. Thank you for calling Fuzati. The premier Catholic Marketing and Technology firm. If you know your party’s extension, please enter it now or press 8 for the directory. Please hold while we connect your call to Extension 0. Thank you for calling. Please leave a message and your call will be returned as soon as possible.
Hi there. My name’s Naomi O’Leary. I’m a journalist and I’m writing about the current referendum campaign in Ireland. I’m getting in touch because I have a few questions for your group and I’m looking for the right person to direct them to. It would be great if you could get back to me. My number is 0… My calls and messages to Fuzati were not answered, but on their Facebook page there was a post from April 23rd. It has since been deleted. But here is what it read: “We’re here in Dublin with Protect the 8 this morning. Pray for us. #warroomsessions.” Now, unlike Undediced on the 8th , Protect the 8th is registered as an official campaign group in the referendum. It’s the campaign group of Family and Life, a pro-life group that has been around since 1996 and that previously opposed the legalization of divorce and the legalization of same-sex marriage. Gavin Sheridan dug up another link to Protect the 8th as well. YouTube ads that they were running initially urged viewers to visit the Undecided8 website before changing to the Protect the 8th website.
The core problem is that anybody can set up a Facebook page and anybody then can run ads against it and then build intelligence or a build audience understanding without anybody knowing who’s doing it or where the money is coming from. So arguably, this will be my personal view, this creates problems around how fair referendum campaign is running the country as open and small as Ireland. Because if anybody can come along from anywhere in the world and say, “O.K. We’re gonna run ads against these guys then we’re gonna share that data with one with an independent group or whether a private individual, then we’re going to keep saturating the Irish market with ads coming from outside, either on YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, or wherever it is. What that allows you to do is get enormous amounts of content in front of Irish voters, where the voters don’t necessarily realize who is behind the ad, where the money came from or have any understanding of what’s going on. So in this example, the Undecided8 website was for all intents and purposes, was presenting itself as, “We are a neutral party. We’re gonna give you the facts about the referendum.” When in fact, that website was actually being run by a pro retain the Eighth Amendment group without ever saying that either on their Facebook page or on the website.
By the way, there’s a hint about where that URL came from. That led us down this rabbit hole. Fuzati’s website has a list of clients, which includes an organization called the Catholic Mutual Group. CMG has been “serving the temporal needs of the church since 1889”. Mostly, it provides things like insurance and employee benefit packages to the church. CMG. Now that’s the same acronym as that Leadpages URL had.
Hi. You’ve reached Greg Standish in Marketing. I’m sorry, Mr. Cole, if you leave a detailed message at the tone, I’ll turn the call as soon as possible. Thank you.
Record your message at the tone. When you are finished. Hang up or press pound for more options.
Hi there. My name’s Naomi O’Leary. I’m a journalist. I’m just calling with a question for a piece of reporting that I’m doing which is about Ireland’s referendum campaign. If you could give me a call back it would be great. My number… At the time of recording, I had still had no answer from CMG or Fuzati. Protect the 8th also did not answer repeated requests for comment.
Naomi, it’s so striking that this has strong parallels with the original campaign that put the amendment into the Constitution to begin with. But, you know, this time it’s really on steroids, like the shady international influence in particular. This is a post-Trump, post-Brexit Facebook version of the 1983 campaign, really.
I want to stress the scale of it as well, Tim, like we’ve seen how social media allows people to be profiled in incredible detail with huge accuracy. So people based on their likes of everything from Jameson Whiskey to, you know, sports teams are being profiled with ads that can follow them around from Google to Facebook to anywhere they go on the Web, where, of course, we spend increasing hours of our life every day. And the people behind those ads are lobby groups whose sources of funding are very opaque. And remember, there are only just over three million Irish voters. Like to put that in context, just one U.S. pro-life Facebook page recently made a call out to “Keep Ireland abortion free.” And that page has almost as many likes as the entire Irish electorate.
Oh my God. Right. On a scale like this, it’s frankly pretty disturbing to think of this as an Irish person.
I have to say there may be influence on the other side as well. So, for example, Amnesty International and the Abortion Rights Campaign were both forced by an Irish funding watchdog to return donations from Open Society Foundation. That’s the organization founded by George Soros, the financier. Soros is like a beloved topic of conspiracy theorists internationally. And of course, this campaign is no different. So there are heaps of Soros abortion meme floating around online, as well as very familiar stuff about fake news and how you can’t trust the evil mainstream media.
Right. I suppose, listeners, we are not the mainstream media. Whatever we are, I don’t know what we are.
I have to say the mainstream media isn’t really a thing that exists, but that’s kind of a topic for another day. But of course, the people involved in the campaigning don’t really see themselves at all as doing anything shady. You know, the way they see it is they’re doing this really important thing. It’s a life or death cause for both sides, and they’re fighting the good fight and doing whatever they can to make the referendum go their way. So on the pro-life side, it’s important to stress, like they see life as precious and sacred. And they basically don’t see a difference between a baby and a fetus. So that fetus needs to be treated as a person, even when the interests of the woman carrying it are in conflict with those of the fetus. Like even if carrying the fetus might make her suffer terribly or it might risk her health. But that’s kind of tough. It doesn’t justify abortion in their eyes. And she has to go through with it because there’s another life at stake. And like in their view, legal abortion is like legal murder. So that’s more or less what I took from my conversation with Mitch Peace. So Mitch is 23. He works in a bank in Dublin and he’s a pro-life activist. He’s behind a page called Fact of the Day. That’s another page, by the way, that sees itself as giving the bear, unbiased facts about the referendum. Mitch is originally from the United States, funnily enough, but he moved to Ireland as a teenager and he became a naturalized citizen in November. So welcome to the club, Mitch.
I grew up in America. My name is Mitch Peace. As you know, so I moved here when I was 16. Went to secondary school and went to college. And now I’m working in the professional world here now.
“Fact of the Day” posts pro-life means and sells T-shirts that read, “Life begins at conception.” Mitch told me what running the page was like.
I think we have a reach of about 50,000 at the moment. So yeah, we’re just trying to, we’re trying to reach as many people as we can and we have a lot of people that are following us. So I work with – I’m not on my own with Fact of the Day. So I have a few different people that are admins with me. So it’s not just myself, but like even even still, though, there’s other people that’ll send me messages. Just people. There’s a Facebook group about pro life that’s like a secret group. And there’s about a thousand people out there. And, you know, like a lot of people on their message, me or try to give me facts of the day they to put up. And yeah, it’s really, it’s really encouraging. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of reputable people, there’s lawyers in there, that are sending me stuff. There’s doctors. And all sorts of stuff.
I asked him about support from the United States and whether he was working directly with people in the U.S. Mitch told me that people there do buy the T-shirts. He’s directly targeted U.S. buyers on some Facebook posts, I noticed. But he said that revenues from those sales go to the U.S. campaign, Stop Abortion Now and not to Ireland. He said U.S. activists were more like an inspiration.
I know people in America that are very well-known and kind of like across the country. And they’re doing some great stuff too. Like they’re closing down, single-handedly I know a guy that’s closing down like all of the Planned Parenthood places in the entire state of Kentucky and stuff like that. I’m not working with them. But I know them. And we’ve learned a lot from them. Just about like just about like the facts regarding abortion and everything like that. Because they go out and they, you know, they try to help the women out. And they said they’ve actually saved hundreds of thousands of babies lives and they’re alive today because of it.
I asked Mitch to tell me about the mood on the ground from his perspective.
To be honest, you know, I’ve been going door to door and everything like that. It’s very encouraging. I feel like the pro-choice side is getting a lot more — they can feel the momentum rising for the “no” side. But like a lot of the people that come are telling me, you know, we’re definitely voting “no” but we wouldn’t tell anybody. I mean, and honestly speaking, I don’t think that the polls are reflecting any– and everybody that’s doing the canvassing would agree — I don’t think the polls are reflecting anything like what’s actually out there in the housing estates, you know.
Now, I was very kindly invited to the Irish embassy in Paris a few weeks ago to speak to Minister Ciarán Cannon, who was in France to discuss the issues facing the Irish diaspora. And considering that health care access is a major issue for women who are forced to leave Ireland and for women who are trying to return to Ireland, I thought I’d ask him about that.
And of course, Minister Cannon is against repealing the Eighth Amendment, even though he’s part of the government that brought forth this referendum. Ministers have been given freedom to vote and campaign as they wish. And Cannon wants to keep the abortion ban in place. So here’s one of his recent tweets. He posted a photo of a cigarette package with a warning on it, advising pregnant women not to smoke with the words, “Smoking can kill your unborn child, warns the NHS. So does abortion. It deliberately ends the life of perfectly healthy unborn children #savethe8th and allow Ireland to continue protecting all of our unborn children.”
The minister discussed many issues about the diaspora with me, which will look at maybe in a future episode. But for now, let’s hear his response to questions about this healthcare access for women. Thank you very much, Minister, for talking to us today.
You’re very welcome.
Our listeners from the Irish passport will be very interested to hear what you have to say about the diaspora, I’m sure. The government has been quite clear, the last few years especially, that they they want immigrants to consider moving back to Ireland. So how are you convincing them? How would you convince them to come back?
Well, currently, we have 500 immigrants per week returning to Ireland at the moment and they’re coming back in the main for two reasons. Predominantly to be closer to their families, which is I just think human nature. And secondly, a very strong perception building internationally that the Irish jobs market is now very fluid and many opportunities are rising in Ireland. They’re coming back to be closer to the families and to take part in the Irish economic recovery. But they were experiencing issues and they were experiencing challenges. Issues around getting driving licences; getting car insurance; being able to secure a mortgage; to open a bank account. So we determined what the problems were. We set out how that can be resolved. We’re now charging each government department with implementing the recommendations of that report.
Now, a huge proportion of those are training. Immigrants will be women and young women. Now, you’ve been campaigning on social media to restrict women’s access to healthcare in Ireland. Can you explain that?
Well, I wouldn’t agree with you. I don’t agree that I’ve been campaigning to do that. I’d been campaigning on social media. And we continue to campaign on social media to protect the rights of unborn children in our constitution. We put that right in there in 1983. We have given the right. And we’ve set it out in a constitution that women and unborn children have equal rights in terms of their right to life, which is a kind of a fairly basic human right. And we passed a very, very comprehensive law in 2013 called the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, which sets out that if a woman’s life is under threat, that a doctor, be it in their GP setting under a maternity setting, can have the best of care afforded to them. And that’s what we’re campaigning for. And I suppose all of the politicians on all sides of this particular part of the argument and debate in Irleand are campaigning and making the case based on their own personal experience and their own conscience.
Our listeners may or may not be aware. So if a woman returns to Ireland at the moment, she’s returned to a country with legislation, as it stands, where if she is carrying a fetus that cannot survive outside the womb, she has to carry that term or face a prison sentence. How can you tell women to return to a country where they have to live under that law?
Well, first of all, Irish or any woman coming to access maternity care in Ireland, is accessing one of the safest maternity care systems in the world. In fact, if you look at the most recent statistics published by the Irish Institute of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians, Ireland is a safer place to be a pregnant woman than the U.K. or the U.S., both of whom provide what they describe as healthcare through abortion services. So Ireland is actually a safer place to be a pregnant woman than either of those two countries.
One of our listeners on that point actually told us that she deliberately left Ireland in order to have her four children because she was afraid of the Irish healthcare system. Why do you think she was so afraid then?
I think a lot of misinformation out there. I think if you speak to, and I do regularly, to doctors involved in both the GP service and indeed our maternity services to what our hospital network, you speak to them individually, they will tell you. And many of them have spoken publicly on this over the last number of months, that Ireland is an exceptionally safe place to be a pregnant woman. We offer an extraordinary professional and quality service. And nobody, to my knowledge, in Ireland has suffered to the extent where they feel that their life or indeed the life of their child was anyway threatened by being part of or partaking in the Irish maternity services. And again, statistics and, you know, indisputable statistics internationally would show that Ireland is one of those safest places in the world to be a pregnant mother. And, you know, and if we are to argue about, “Can we improve those services?” Yes, of course we can. And I think the discussion around this whole debate has to move to a point where we have to be as supportive as you possibly can be of our pregnant women, are pregnant mothers, expectant mothers, and invest in the resources that can build that confidence. So that woman doesn’t have that perception, that she can feel absolutely safe in being a mother in Ireland in the 21st century.
Speaking of numbers and speaking of the diaspora, then 113 left your own constituency in 2013 to access healthcare. Where’s their voice? You are the Minister for the diaspora.
OK, well first of all, in terms of my role as Minister for the diaspora and Teachta Dála has been very clear on this. All of us in government are free to express an opinion in this particular debate which doesn’t reflect our ministerial role. So we’re all just as members of the Parliament, 159 of us, expressing our own opinions. So I am not obliged to somehow, first of all, represent the viewpoint of the diaspora in this particular debate. And secondly, it is impossible to determine what the collective viewpoint of the 70 million Irish people worldwide is on this particular matter.
OK. And the 70 million people worldwide are very much looking at you as a representative of them. Now recently on Twitter, you compared to banning abortion to encouraging women not to smoke. Is that the kind of message that we want to give to our diaspora?
No, that’s not what I did. What I did on Twitter was I pointed out, again, the absolute inconsistency of an approach where we encourage, quite rightly, women not to smoke or consume alcohol during their pregnancy because in doing so, they can actually threaten the life of their unborn child. And we have that set out as a an ambition of our government and of our health services. And on the other hand, we have some people within government and indeed within the Irish political sphere as a whole, while we are seeking to protect unborn children by by encouraging mothers not to smoke and not to drink alcohol. We are at the same time saying there is no issue with ending the life of those unborn children of up to three months of pregnancy. So I’m just pointing out the absolute inconsistency of that approach, acknowledging that there’s an importance in preserving the life and the health of an unborn child while at the same time proposing to end the life of an unborn child, which to me seems utterly illogical.
Are we creating a new diaspora of young women?
No, we’re not. Again, I stress to you that if there’s an issue and a perception that Ireland is an unsafe place to be a pregnant woman, that perception is then inaccurate, is statistically inaccurate. It’s proven to be statistically inaccurate. And if we need to somehow engage better with our Irish pregnant, our Irish mothers, expectant mothers, if we somehow need to feel true to make them aware of the services that are there, if we need to invest more money in our maternity service, let’s spend the money and invest those resources.
Now, I noticed that the minister didn’t really answer the question when you asked him about fatal fetal abnormalities. So like we said, those are the fetuses that have conditions like Anencephaly, meaning that they’ll be born without major parts of their head and brains so they can’t survive outside the womb. Now, currently women who are carrying a fetus like that have to go through labour, even though they know the baby won’t survive.
Yes. And many parents have gone through this and are now campaigning to repeal the 8th beause it bans abortion in these cases, which as you can imagine, is incredibly cruel. You know, the mother is forced to go through the whole pregnancy and she’s going to have people congratulating her and asking about the baby’s future and be now physically, you know, visibly pregnant when she knows the fetus has no chance of life. The only other option for mothers like that is to seek healthcare outside Ireland.
Cannon did bring up maternal safety statistics and he said essentially that it can’t be too much of a problem because Ireland is one of the safest countries in the world to be pregnant and to give birth.
Yeah interestingly, this was the same line given by representatives of the “no” campaign a few weeks ago again, and on one of Ireland’s most popular weekly chat shows, the Late Late, they held a debate on the referendum at the end of April, and that would have had an absolutely huge viewership in Ireland. So take a listen to the representative of the “no” campaign on that show. This is Wendy Grace, who hosts a chat show on a Christian radio station in Ireland. And this is an excerpt from her opening statement and it definitely sounds quite familiar.
We need to learn from the mistakes of other countries like Britain, where for every four babies that are born, one is aborted. That’s a fact. Ireland is one of the safest places in the world to be pregnant. That, too, is a fact. Don’t fall prey to the unfounded fears being generated by others in this debate. They want you to ignore the reality of Ireland’s safety record and ignore how extreme the government’s referendum proposal is. What we’re being asked to vote for on the 25th of May is not abortion for complex medical reasons. We’re voting to legalize the abortion of healthy babies, of healthy mothers.
And here’s the response to that from Dr. Peter Boylan. He’s an obstetrician with 40 years experience and who, listeners might remember, has actually made an appearance before on the Irish passport.
Death is not a very good indicator of the safety of our healthcare system. If we set death as the indicator of successful outcome of pregnancy, death of the mother, then that’s an extremely low bar to set. We’ve heard of the deaths that have occurred, Savita and others, and we’ve also heard of the severe harm that has caused to women, short of death, that’s not good enough in a modern, civilised society and in a modern medical system. We want to do better than that for Irish women. We want to protect them from the serious harm that is caused by the inability of doctors to treat women appropriately. We have the example of the women today in the Irish Times describing her very complex cardiac condition where she was told that she might die, but she wasn’t close enough to death to have a termination.
So the maternal safety records are not necessarily all that they might seem. Now, I can only guess that Minister Cannon and the “no” campaign in general are trying to steer the conversation away from infamous cases where the ban on inducing an abortion has led to both the woman and the fetus dying.
And I suppose the anti-repeal side would argue that if higher deaths aren’t showing up in the statistics, well, then these must be anomalies. I think there are two things to point out, though. One is that it’s not very convincing to say, “Oh, well, it’s only a handful of women who die so therefor, it’s not really a big issue.” Like, I don’t think that really cuts it. And also, there’s a hell of a lot that can be bad that is short of death, and arguing that the ban on abortion can be that be that bad because not many people die in pregnancy or childbirth in Ireland also assumes that the Irish residents are not having abortions when in fact they are. There are lots of Irish women have abortions by getting pills or travelling.
Yeah, right. And Dr. Boylan also brought this up during that television debate. Those pills ordered online, even though they’re totally safe in a controlled environment, are being taken in an unregulated and unsupervised fashion, which has led to serious problems with overdose, for instance, because, you know, even if a woman has an adverse reaction to the pill or if she takes too many of them, she can’t seek medical help without fearing prosecution. And Dr. Boylan described this as a modern day situation of backstreet abortions that were happening in Ireland. These cases, I’m guessing, are not being taken into account in those maternity care statistics.
I also have to take issue about what the minister said about there being an unfair perception that the Irish healthcare system is not safe for women. Now, I think that is not down to this information, like he said, sorry. That is a very logical thing for women to suspect, because this is a health system that has a track record of operating on principles other than what is merely best medical practice for women. I mean, even as we speak, there is a raging scandal about women who weren’t told that they’d been falsely cleared for cervical cancer. And it goes back a lot longer than that as well. Like just look at the case of symphysiotomy, for example. So that’s an extremely outdated, barbaric practice that was still being done to women in Irish hospitals right into the 1980s. And this is totally horrible, but I’m gonna say it okay. It involves severing women’s pelvises to make it easier for them to get a baby out. And the reason doctors thought it was the right thing to do is because they thought it was preferable to women who would otherwise need caesareans, which they believed would limit the amount of children they have. So it would be better to do this barbaric thing than limit the amount of children they could possibly produce.
Right. Indeed. And of course, we see a strong Catholic influence there as well. And a lot of people on the repeal side will point out that the Catholic Church itself does not have a good record on the treatment of women in Ireland, to say the least. The last decades have been marked by successive horrific scandals about abuse and the incarceration of women in modern laundries, for example, or other institutions, and in some cases their babies being taken from them and literally sold. So the “love both” slogan can ring very hollow for that reason in particular.
We want to end by focusing on the people that this campaign is really about. So those for whom situations like being pregnant with your rapist’s baby or discovering you’re pregnant just before your school exams or finding out that you’re very much wanted baby will not survive. The people for whom these situations are not hypotheticals, because as much as we all wish that these things didn’t happen, they do happen every day to ordinary people who are then forced to make very difficult and very traumatic decisions.
The stories of those people have been collected recently on a page called “In Her Shoes.” Women of the 8th.” That’s a page on Facebook. And it’s grown to possibly become the biggest grassroots Facebook page in the campaign. And, of course, it’s a pro-choice page.
Yes. An interestingly enough, “In Her Shoes” is also run by an American. So the founder of “In Her Shoes” lives in a small town in the west of Ireland. Her name is Erin And she spoke to us on the condition that we not use her surname. And she’s married to an Irishman and she has three children. She doesn’t have a vote in the referendum. She says she could be naturalized, but she told me she she doesn’t have the €1000 that it costs right now. In fact, the fact of not having a vote is actually what drove her to set up the page. So let’s hear from her.
Erin:
I started the project because I don’t have a vote in Ireland, despite living here for 12 years and giving birth to three children. And it was really important for me to be involved in this campaign to find somebody who was an undecided voter that would vote for me and vote for the future for my daughters. My husband will vote, but just getting one extra vote really meant — was really, really important for me.
Erin started campaigning in local towns, manning an infromation stall about abortion access. It was there that she had an encounter that changed everything. She met an older man who was against abortion, but when it came to cases like rape, she got the feeling he was less of a no and more of a maybe. She had a theory and it goes like this: It’s that Irish people are basically sound and they don’t want to cause people to suffer. The only reason the law could continue to make people suffer is because women’s voices weren’t being heard, she reasons. The only challenge was to break the silence.
Erin:
I went home and set up the page that day. Kind of instantly within telling a few women’s stories, the stories started flooding into me and saying, “Can I share mine? I really am ready to talk about mine as well.” And, “Can it remain anonymous? Because I don’t want somebody in my town to find out.” I share around three to four stories per day, and each day now I’m starting to receive around 20 per day.
“In her shoes” has become a vast database of crowdsourced heartbreak. There are stories of rape, stories of incest, stories of pregnancies that simply came at the wrong time and were ended in shame and silence. Stories of babies that were very much wanted, but that couldn’t make it.
Erin:
Every story that I receive, none of them have been the same. None of them have been from, you know, some people would have this idea of who who is this girl that’s having an abortion and what is her life like. And no two stories have been the same. The one thing I’ve noticed with all of them is the same theme of I feel so alone. I feel so let down by my country. I really wanted to have support here. And the only regret I have is that I couldn’t do this at home.
Erin has found herself on the receiving end of outpourings from a thousand strangers. Women in their 60s, who’ve carried a secret all their lives and thought they’d go to their graves without sharing it. Or teenagers who are alone and feel they have no one to turn to.
Erin:
It’s a lot. You know, it’s a huge emotional, it takes a lot of emotional energy to take on those stories and to apply in a way that I’m hearing them. But it’s also incredibly humbling and a huge privilege to receive those stories and to be the person that they are coming to. It’s incredibly rewarding to know that the page has started conversations. When I’m hearing in the comments from the people saying that this has changed, it’s changed their mind completely or that they were kind of a maybe and they didn’t understand and now they’re voting yes. That’s just incredibly rewarding to me because that’s my voter. You know, that’s the kind of thing that kind of keeps me boosted. And knowing that this is supporting women, the women who after they write to me and after it’s been shared, come back to me and say, “Thank you so much for giving me a voice. Thank you so much for letting me talk about this and for having this platform. There’s been so healing for me to be able to tell.” It’s not a drain on me to read these stories every day because I know that that’s also helping women. And I think that’s in helping those women, it’s helping society. Sorry. That’s my daughter, is walking around here playing.
We’re going to end this episode with a story that was submitted to that page “In Her Shoes.” If you want to read more of those stories, by the way, you can check them out on the Facebook page. This one is by a woman called Aine O’Neill from East Galway, which means, incidentally, that she is a constituent of Minister Ciarán Cannon and one of the people who has had very real life consequences from the law he supports.
We’ll take turns to read it out. We might add a trigger warning here for listeners who might have had their own related experiences in the past or be affected by such stories. Here goes. As I sit down to write about this, a wave of sadness comes over me and I feel the pain, raw and consuming, once more. Now almost two years later, I’ve been through two rounds of counselling, many cathartic letters or bits written for this or that, some published, some only handwritten on an A4 pad. This one, though, feels like the last desperate attempt to save someone, the suffering I had to endure. To use my heartache to bring about change. Feeling lucky enough to have it in me to do it yet dirty and wrong that it has to be this way. My private life. A time of utter despair. Now, a thing to be voted on. I really hope that this is the last time.
It was a sunny and warm June day when I went for my 12-week scan. I was literally full of the joys, having already had a healthy baby boy four years earlier. The thought of any issues never crossed my mind. I couldn’t wait to tell him he was going to be a big brother. I just needed that precious scan picture. The excitement and giddiness mounted as I waited to be called.
And there it was, a heartbeat, a hand, a foot. The little bundle I was creating, much loved and wanted. But I could tell within seconds that something was not right. The room too quiet. Too many clicks of the machine. Too hard pressing on my tummy. Most of all, the shape of my little bean, not what you would expect. She turned to me and held my hand and said she was so, so sorry. No chance for my little one to make it outside of me.
My heart stopped and everything sounded strange, like I was under water. Anencephaly, a word unknown by me. A word I was unable to pronounce or retain. And from this underwater place, I moved my feet to the consultant’s room and waited. Big hot, wet tears flowing down my face. Shock and hurt and pain. And yet an unwavering understanding that this pregnancy must come to an end. So I rally myself to ask the question What do I do now? Please, please don’t tell me to go to England. Don’t turf me out like I hear you do. Mind me. Help me. Show me care and compassion. All I got were whispers and side looks, and a suggestion to Google the condition. The shame of this country laid bare to me. These professionals, I believe wanting to help me, being made cruel by our Constitution. I found myself out on the street in my underwater bubble wondering what in the world is going on. Looking across at the hospital, feeling like a dumped piece of rubbish. Not even a leaflet with information to guide me. No contact numbers, no assistance whatsoever. All I had was that green folder with the usual pregnancy stuff and one single piece of paper with those words I couldn’t even look at. Others walking past me, holding theirs proudly. I wanted to puke. I wanted to die. Auto-pilot set in so I could get myself home. I will be honest here. I screamed the house down. I screamed for my mommy. I screamed in pain and loss and anger. Eventually, though, I pulled myself together. I knew deep down this was going to need careful and timely attention. I rang my mom and sister after the tears. We made a plan. In a harsh twist, they were both out of the country at the time.
I called my GP and then the consultant I’d seen from the hospital. My GP, unable to comment on something he could not see, I had to leave a message with the hospital administrator who actually scoffed at me when I asked to speak with the consultant. I explained the situation as best I could, trying to get across the urgency of it. Over the course the next two days, I tried several times to get in contact with that doctor. No one from the hospital ever called me back at any stage.
So then, I googled it. I was afraid to look. When I say afraid, I mean I had to force my head to turn to look at the screen. Force my eyes to open. Force them to focus. My stomach dropping like a stone. Something invisible, crushing against my chest. The information and images a harsh reality I needed to see. I cried and cried and held my stomach and told my little bundle that I am so, so sorry. When I could breathe again, a resolve came over me. Push through girl, be strong and end this suffering.
Passport checks. One of them was out of date. Why is this relevant at a time like this? But it was when you export healthcare, patients need the correct documents. Sorting this problem caused a major headache. Even more phone calls, and worse more explaining. Too tired and confused to make up a story, you have to go over and over it again and again. I find myself on a train at 7 am. the next morning heading to Dublin. Once it turned 9am, I was back planning my funeral from the comfort of a semi-full carriage. More calls. More explaining. My heart becoming more of a rock with every insult this situation brought. This was the time when I should have been coming to terms with this tragedy, grieving for my loss.
A trip to Dublin Zoo while we waited for the passport process. A handy excuse for this ridiculous trip to my clever 4 year old. While there, I tell him as happy as I can muster, “And guess what? Tomorrow we’re going on a plane to see your auntie and uncle.”
And somehow I make it home to Galway. And somehow I pack a bag. Make more phone calls. Have a harrowing phone consultation with the clinic. Next morning, up at 2:00 a.m. with my son in tow and drive to Dublin because 400 euro more to fly from Shannon was a luxury I could not afford. 48 hours after getting the diagnosis. 48 hours of little to no sleep. 48 hours of pure torture. But we made it to the airport. I’m just about able to hold it together. To not scream, “Will somebody help me?” as we pass through security. As the plane takes off and everybody is safely tied to their seats, I allow a little bit out. I can feel that pain now. It is still here. I will never be the same. I will never have the same connection to my country, a place I always felt pride and love for. You tossed me out in my greatest time of need. And I will fight every day until you stop punishing tragedy. Until you treat pregnant women equally and give us back our autonomy.
It was another week before I finally got home. And again, I was lucky at that. When I did get to the clinic, they wanted to send me away. I was so sick from the stress of the previous days, they said I was not fit. An understanding nurse and two doctors having to examine me later, they finally agreed to do it considering the circumstances.
Honestly, a part of me, despite this, still feels so lucky. Lucky that so many women have stood up before me so that I at least knew this was so wrong. Lucky to have had the financial support to pay for the termination and the flights. Lucky to have been brought up in a house where there is no shame or stigma, only love and compassion. A place where we were encouraged to use our voice. Vote “yes” on the 25th of May and end this torture.
OK, so listeners, there isn’t really much more we can say after that. We want to sincerely thank Aine and “In Her Shoes” for allowing us to share their stories.
Whatever you do, folks, if you have a vote you better well use it. There’s one thing that both sides agree on, and that’s that the outcome of this vote is going to shape Ireland for years to come. The 8th of May is the absolute deadline to submit your application. So get on the register to vote if you haven’t done that already. Do it now. You can check here on the register and download a form to get on it at Check the register.ie.
Before we go, I’d like to thank the Irish Embassy in Paris once again for hosting us. They asked me to send a shout out to the Irish and France Association, which is the only purely community-focused association of its kind in the country. So if any of your listeners are based in France, you can check them out at irishinfrance.org.
And don’t forget to check out our exclusive mini series, Halfpints, which is only available to our Patreon subscribers. The second episode is now available, so if you want to become a patreon, you can head over to www.patreon.com/theirish passport.
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Thanks so much for listening. And slán.