Anti-abortion and pro-choice activists are gearing up for a hard-fought referendum in which the youth vote could prove key

An average of 11 women travel each day from the island of Ireland to have an abortion in England and Wales, according to the most recent Department of Health data. That adds up to more than 200,000 journeys since 1983, when the passing of the Eighth Amendment underlined the ban on abortions in the republic.

In Northern Ireland, the potential punishment for contravening the ban is even more severe. “It’s much more difficult even to have a conversation about abortion in Belfast,” says Jess Brien, a 25-year-old pro-choice campaigner who lives in Northern Ireland’s capital, “because the maximum sentence for having one here is life imprisonment.”

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No women are currently in prison for having an abortion in Ireland, with only suspended sentences having been handed out in recent years (in the republic, the maximum jail sentence is 14 years). But Brien, who returned to Belfast last year after working in music PR, says it’s “definitely strange moving to Belfast after living in London. You have the privilege of free healthcare in England – whereas if you’re going to a family planning clinic in Belfast, it’s shrouded in shame. You get questioned intensely.”

Maria Maymes also lives in Belfast, but the 21-year-old Ulster University student is poles apart from Brien when it comes to abortion. “Media bias has created this idea that all young people are pro-choice,” Maymes says. “But when I’m on the streets [campaigning], I get a very positive reaction from young people. The negative reactions to our views come mainly from a middle-aged or older demographic. Most young people have an instinct within them to protect life.”



People judge you for being pro-choice. There’s no support at all if you go through an abortion – you feel humiliated Jess Brien

Maymes and Brien represent a new wave of youth-driven campaigning on both sides of the abortion argument, which will come to a head over the next few months now the Irish government has confirmed it will hold a referendum on reform of the country’s strict anti-abortion laws by the end of May.

The battle is hard fought and the youth vote could be all-important – as was shown by the vote to legalise same sex marriage in 2015, when the 60% turnout played a considerable part in its passing.



“It’s an incredibly emotive issue – moral, ethical, and a matter of human rights,” says Maymes, who campaigns for Youth for Life, a subsidiary of Precious Life, the largest anti-abortion group in Northern Ireland. She complains that “it’s difficult to engage in a conversation with pro-choice people, because they’re just so angry”.



But according to Brien, who is a member of Room for Rebellion, a female-led pro-choice organisation with strong links in London: “People judge you heavily for being pro-choice. There’s no support at all if you go through an abortion – you feel humiliated voicing your story.”

‘Shameful experience’

The founder of Room for Rebellion, 25-year-old Isis O’Regan, was born and raised in Galway, on Ireland’s west coast. “I went to a Catholic all-girls school there where there was no sex education and we were made to promise abstinence,” she says, adding that this lack of education led to some unplanned pregnancies among her school peers.

The silencing of those who subverted sexual prohibitions led to a crisis for O’Regan. “When I was 16, I had to get the morning after pill,” she recalls. “It was illegal at the time because I was underage, so I couldn’t tell my parents and I didn’t have the €80 to pay for it. I ended up stealing the money – and then I still had to convince the doctors to give it to me, after they threatened to tell my parents. It was an incredibly shameful experience.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Isis O’Regan, who moved to London from Galway, aims to build a pro-choice community amongst the diaspora to support women in Ireland. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

O’Regan argues that young people in Ireland are “brainwashed”, and that the journey to England to have abortions in secret has been normalised. “It becomes routine for these young girls to disappear and put their lives in danger,” she says. “We’re discriminated against on a daily basis. When it comes to reproductive rights, women are second-class citizens in Ireland.”

Room for Rebellion, a protest group centred on holding fundraiser club nights, aims to build a pro-choice community amongst the diaspora, supporting women in Ireland through politicised partying. For their first event in February last year, O’Regan – who says she moved to London three years ago “to get away from the sense of prohibition against my bodily rights” – held two parties simultaneously in Dublin and London, live-streaming each city on to the other’s dancefloor.

Abortion is never going to create an ideal feminist society, because an act of violence is never empowering Blánaid ní Bhraonáin

“I needed to have a visual representation of the women at home,” she explains. “I wanted my sisters and my best friends to see us physically dancing beside them. Streaming it on to the dancefloor was as close as we could get to each other.”

That dislocation became clear in Belfast, where O’Regan attempted to hold another Room For Rebellion event. “Getting venues to agree to hosting a pro-choice night was much more difficult than we’d expected,” she says. “People there were scared of negative reactions and the legal implications, so we didn’t go ahead.”

Campaigners on the other side of the abortion argument also talk about an atmosphere of silence. “The best tactic that those pushing for abortion in Ireland have is to keep pro-life people quiet,” says 22-year-old campaigner Clare McCarthy.

A student at Trinity College in Dublin, McCarthy says she hid the fact she was pro-life “for years, because of the intolerance my peers expressed in front of me. The disdain I witnessed was alienating.”

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Identifying as a feminist, McCarthy sees the abortion debate as an equality issue: “Even one abortion is a tragedy. As a feminist, I embrace the rights of all human beings and reject the use of force over another. Abortion does not liberate women.”

McCarthy’s fellow Trinity student and anti-abortion campaigner, 22-year-old Blánaid ní Bhraonáin, says her views were challenged at a pro-life rally last summer. “A counter-protester jumped in front of me and shouted, ‘How dare you call yourself a feminist!’” she recalls. “But abortion is never going to create an ideal feminist society, because an act of violence is never empowering.”

‘Not here to punish’

Room For Rebellion member Anna Cafolla had a similar Catholic education to O’Regan, despite living on the other side of the border. “We would be made to go to pro-life conferences from 13 onwards, and would pray for the souls of dead babies together – it was brainwashing,” she says. “Since the church is so tied to our education and political systems, it creates an endemic denial of allowing young women the freedom of choice.”

Cafolla recalls how friends would “queue up on a Saturday at the Brook centre in Belfast to get the pill. You’d see people you knew from school – kids were calling you sluts for being there.”

The Brook is one of the few sexual health clinics remaining in Belfast, after the Marie Stopes centre closed recently as government funding refocused on projects in England.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Abortion protesters outside the Belfast Marie Stopes clinic, which closed recently. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty

Maymes sees the closure of the Marie Stopes clinic as a positive development, suggesting such organisations contribute to “a huge culture of death in England, where one in five pregnancies end in termination”. The latest government statistics show that, among women aged 15-44 in England and Wales, the abortion rate was 16 per 1,000 women last year.

Maymes works with Stanton Healthcare, an anti-abortion organisation that supports unwanted pregnancies to term. She labels it “a replacement for Marie Stopes; a loving and beautiful alternative for women”.

“We’re not here to punish women and we’re not advocating for jail sentences”, Maymes says, “but we do not support the legalisation of abortion in any case.”

Even if you don’t have a personal experience, you should still care. This is about how women are treated in our society Cara Sanquest

With nearly 80% of the Northern Irish public believing abortion should be legal when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, and 73% in favour of abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities, according to 2016’s Life and Times Survey, opinion is moving decisively away from blanket criminalisation.

“There are several close friends of mine who have had to travel to England to have terminations, one because of a fatal foetal abnormality,” says O’Regan. “The fact that women can’t even speak to each other about these traumatic experiences says volumes about the inequality we face.”

The risk of sharing experiences even with trained professionals has come to light through a number of recent high-profile legal cases. Last year in Northern Ireland, the mother of a 15-year-old was reported to the police by her GP for buying abortion pills online for her daughter. In 2016, a 21-year-old woman was given a one-year suspended sentence for procuring her own abortion by using poison; the foetal remains were found and handed in to the police by her flatmates.

With such strong beliefs on both sides, Cara Sanquest – co-founder of the London Irish Abortion Rights Campaign – believes that, regardless of the referendum result, “We’re not going to get free, safe and legal abortion across the island of Ireland by May 2018.”

There is no proposed referendum in Northern Ireland, and with its government at a stalemate over Brexit, there are yet to be talks on the state of the devolved law on abortion there.

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In the Republic, a recent Amnesty International poll showed 87% of the population supported a general increase in access to abortion there. An earlier Sunday Times poll found that 37% of 18- to 34-year-olds supported allowing abortion with no restrictions, compared to 31% of 35- to 54-year-olds.

According to Sanquest, “The responsibility for changing this law cannot only be on the people who have had abortions. It’s a huge burden to expect people to campaign who have already been exiled from their country and let down by its laws. Even if you don’t have a personal experience, you should still care. This is about how women are being treated in our society.”

O’Regan, however, remains positive. “We have to believe that the referendum will be a success; that young people will push it through, just like the vote for same sex marriage. I have faith in everyone back home. And if it doesn’t happen, we’ll keep protesting and dancing.”