They are stories that are rarely heard in Ireland, personal and often harrowing real life tales of women forced to travel to the UK to have abortions.

But this week 12 women will speak out publicly for the first time in a new film, made in response to the Irish government's limited abortion law reforms which, to the anger of many campaigners, excluded many women who want to have terminations in the republic.

Those excluded by the new legislation passed last month include the victims of rape and incest, as well as women whose babies will be born dead owing to fatal foetal abnormalities.

The No More Shame video will broadcast testimony from Irish women forced to travel to Britain for terminations. However, their words will be voiced by 12 actors in order to protect their identities given the possibility of physical threats against them.

Last year, the Guardian screened the real life stories of three Irish women who spoke about having to have abortions in the UK because of Irish law. The women were all carrying babies with fatal foetal abnormalities.

The latest abortion film project will be launched in Cork on Thursday and simultaneously screened around the world via Facebook and YouTube.

The film has been put together by Laura Kinsella and Liz Dunphy, who say their aim is "to break the silence of the 12 women who leave Ireland daily to terminate their pregnancies, by amplifying voices that have been absent from public debate".

Dr Sandra McAvoy, from the women's studies department at University College Cork, welcomed the film, which she said would be break the culture of silence on the abortion trail from Ireland to Britain.

"Religious and legal arguments dehumanise and undermine women while this project helps to redress that imbalance," she said.

The academic pointed out that the abortion changes in the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 would probably not have saved Savita Halapannavar – the dentist who died in a Galway hospital last autumn after being refused an emergency termination.

"The bill continues to criminalise women who procure terminations on Irish soil, even in cases of rape. The Act does nothing to help those couples faced with diagnoses of fatal foetal abnormalities. No More Shame explores some of the many complexities of crisis pregnancy that remain taboo, it aims to humanise the debate and re-establish the importance of respect for a woman's life, beyond her reproductive capacity," McAvoy said.

One of Ireland's most prominent pro-choice campaigners, the Irish Labour senator Ivana Bacik, has described the online video as "a welcome project in the campaign for reproductive justice".

According to the republic's department of health, about 4,000 Irish women travelled to British hospitals and clinics to terminate their pregnancies last year. They included 124 who were under 18.

Since the exposure of dozens of clerical sex abusers and revelations that Ireland's Catholic hierarchy covered up various paedophile scandals, Irish politicians have been less fearful of being denounced from the pulpit, which in the past would have been fatal for their careers in one of the Vatican's most favoured and loyal nations.

The Fine Gael-Labour government, though, was not so much prompted by a new sense of defiance against the Catholic clergy and Rome, but rather a series of court cases in Dublin and Strasbourg.

In 1992, the Irish supreme court ruled that abortion should be allowed if there was a threat to a mother's life, including suicide. The ruling was connected to the case of a 14-year-old rape victim who became pregnant and was refused permission to travel outside the republic for an abortion. Twenty-one years later, that ruling has now been enshrined in Irish law.

Ireland was also under pressure after a European court of human rights ruling that a woman in remission with cancer was discriminated against because she was forced to travel overseas for a termination. However, under the new law, this woman would still not be entitled to an abortion in Ireland.

The No More Shame video campaign invites people to upload their own videos on the issue to the YouTube site.