The live-tweeters were not the only Irish women who went to England to get abortions over the weekend. They said they went to two clinics on Saturday, one in Manchester and another an hour away in Liverpool, because the first one was too busy to accommodate them. They said they met several other Irish women at both clinics.

“We were talking to them at the end of the day because we were all waiting for our taxis back,” the companion said. “If you see a woman on her own in an abortion clinic, the chances are that lonely woman keeping to herself is Irish.”

Ireland has changed significantly in recent years. It became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote in 2015, and the Roman Catholic Church has lost its once-dominant role, in part because of a series of sexual abuse scandals.

“A lot of the Irish people, and especially Irish women, have shed the church,” the companion said. “The church is losing its grip, but the government hasn’t caught up to the idea that women need to be freed.”

The government has been under pressure in recent months to relax its abortion laws, which Amnesty International has called among “the world’s most discriminatory and punitive.”

In 2012, Savita Halappanavar, 31, a dentist who lived near Galway, died after she was reportedly denied a potentially lifesaving abortion, spurring at least two investigations and reviving the debate over Ireland’s ban on most abortions.

In June, Ireland was criticized by a United Nations panel that said its policies amounted to cruel, degrading and discriminatory treatment of women. That same month, it agreed to hold a “citizens’ assembly” to study the issue by October, but critics said the proposal was not enough.