Father Ted writer and wife describe termination of foetus that had no chance of survival – an act that could have led to prison had it taken place in Ireland

When Helen Linehan found out in 2004 that there was something fatally wrong with the 11-week-old foetus she was carrying, she was advised to have an immediate termination, because doctors knew there was no chance that the baby would survive longer than an hour after birth.

The foetus had a condition known as acrania, which meant that its skull had not closed over the brain. Although it probably would have survived inside the womb, it would not have lived once it was born, and doctors were clear that termination was the only option. Accompanied by her husband, Graham – writer of the television comedy series Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd – she had an abortion three days later in a hospital near their home in London. “It was terribly sad and devastating, but it was handled well,” she said.

Some months later, they moved back to Ireland, where they discovered that, had they been living there during this first pregnancy, Helen would have been forced to carry the pregnancy to term, or face a 14-year prison sentence for procuring an illegal abortion.

The shock of that revelation has prompted the couple to speak out about their experience for the first time, as part of a campaign by Amnesty International calling for decriminalisation of abortion in Ireland. The fact that abortion is illegal in Ireland, even in cases where there is no chance for the foetus to survive, makes Ireland “a dangerous place to be pregnant”, said Graham. “I don’t think it is safe for women in Ireland to be pregnant. Abortion is an important medical procedure and when that’s taken off the table, then you’re not safe. A place without abortion puts two lives in danger, not one,” he said.

“In Ireland, Helen would be a criminal to have undergone the termination. She would have had to carry the child knowing it would die in great pain shortly after she had given birth to it,” he said. “I have always been very proud to be Irish but I am embarrassed by Ireland’s abortion laws. This is just something you can’t be proud of. It’s barbaric.”

Graham and Helen have collaborated with Amnesty on a short campaign film calling on the Irish government to repeal the eighth amendment of the constitution, which puts the foetus’s right to life on the same footing as a woman’s.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amnesty International campaign video.

Helen said she was prompted to make the film by a sense of outrage at how she could have been criminalised for a difficult decision had she not been living in England at the time. She would have found it very hard to have been forced to carry a baby to term in the knowledge that it was going to die as soon as it was born.

“It would have been life-changing. To endure the full-term pregnancy, and to come home empty-handed and with the physical changes that come with pregnancy – it would have been awful. I don’t know how I would I have got through that, mentally or physically,” she said.

She described Ireland’s abortion laws as “abusive”. “It is a form of abuse against women. We need to have our own choices,” she said. “If men had babies, the laws would be very different.”

Around 10 women travel from Ireland to Britain or another European country for an abortion every day. “Many others – those who perhaps cannot face the thought of undertaking such a long journey for such a harrowing reason, or who perhaps can’t afford to make the journey in the first place – risk unsafe, illegal abortions, which, without medical supervision, risk health and even death,” Helen said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Helen and Graham Linehan talk to Amnesty International.

“In Ireland it is illegal to have an abortion, even in cases like ours where the foetus has a fatal impairment; even in cases where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Unless her life is in immediate danger, a woman faces up to 14 years in prison for having an abortion.



“These antiquated laws, enshrined in a constitution that was written for another time, bring suffering and sometimes even death to the thousands of women and girls they touch,” she went on. “Ireland will never become a mature country until we move past this point. Women who need this form of healthcare are not criminals.”

There has been growing demand for the Irish government to allow a referendum on legalising abortion, and last month thousands marched through Dublin to show their support for decriminalisation. The death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012, after she was denied an abortion when she began miscarrying, focused attention on the issue, as did reports last year of the treatment of a young asylum seeker who had been raped before coming to Ireland, who was refused an abortion by the Irish health service. When she tried to escape to England to have an abortion, she was arrested and deported back to Ireland, where she was forced to go ahead with the pregnancy. The baby was given up for adoption.

Grainne Teggart, a campaign manager at Amnesty UK, said: “Women are suffering unnecessarily under Ireland’s repressive abortion laws. Thousands of women are forced to leave Ireland every year to access healthcare services to which they are entitled. It’s time Irish political leaders stopped turning their backs on women and committed to a referendum to repeal the eighth amendment.”

Although a referendum earlier this year made Ireland the first country to legalise same-sex marriage through popular vote, Graham said he thought this did not indicate that a referendum on abortion would be easily won. “The fight for marriage equality is a fun, enjoyable, feelgood enterprise. In the fight for abortion, the road doesn’t lead anywhere nice. Abortion isn’t something that anyone wants, but you still have to fight for it. So it’s going to be difficult. But I don’t think Ireland can fully move on from its past, and the depressing things about how women were treated in Ireland, until they sort this one out.”

• This article was amended on 21 October 2015. An earlier version said an abortion had been medically recommended for Savita Halappanavar. That is not the case.