Six years ago, I responded to a request from an Irish newspaper. They were looking for stories from women who’d had to travel for an abortion due to Ireland’s draconian laws. Anonymity was guaranteed. I happen to be one of the 12 Irish women a day who have abortions (roughly nine travel abroad either for abortion care, and three or so more take illegally obtained pills). After emergency contraception failed in 2006, I found myself having to fly to Utrecht in the Netherlands for a termination. So I had a story to tell. I went to meet the journalist and begged her never to reveal my identity. I was sure that if people heard me mention the A-word, let alone that I’d had one, they would never laugh at me again. Most of my work is in comedy. Abortion isn’t the first thing on the list when it comes to laughs. So how did I come to be standing on a stage in Dublin Castle on Saturday evening, celebrating the referendum result with politicians from almost all parties, alongside women who’d made the sad and lonely journey overseas for healthcare?

The woman sitting next to you on the bus is 'that woman'. The woman on the telly is. Your daughter is. You could be

There’s a bit of a story in that, too. In 2015, Ireland had just become the first country in the world to bring in equal marriage via popular vote. The whole country was glowing with newfound equality, even though it had come at a price: LGBTQ+ people had had to smile on the doorsteps asking voters to grant them their rights, even if the answer was no or that someone might consider it. I was so proud of them. They were so brave. And it made me feel even more cowardly for not breaking the silence on my own truth. I felt angry, too, that I was colluding in someone else’s lie. Why was I staying silent to assuage the moral discomfort of strangers? We all knew we knew someone who “went to England”, who had “travelled” (these have been our euphemisms for abortion).

But we didn’t really know. We didn’t see their faces. There were people who talked about having had abortions: the writer Mary Holland stood up long ago but nobody stood with her. In 2015, a month after the marriage-equality referendum, there were about eight of us gathered around a table, drinking and chatting about what had to be next. It had to be repealing the 8th amendment: the constitutional clause that gave equal rights to a foetus and the person carrying it. All of us at the table had been vocally pro-choice (in itself a bit risky back in the day). We’d taken to the streets in anger when Savita Halappanavar needlessly died, marched at the Abortion Rights Campaign’s March for Choice, but never shared our own experiences. You just didn’t do that here.

So I decided to rip off the plaster, to see what would happen: “I’ve had one,” I said. “I’ve had an abortion.” Three of the others said they had, too. Irish Times journalist Róisín Ingle was one of them. The feeling of solidarity and relief was incredible but we knew we would have to take it further. We would have to use the platforms available to us to spread that solidarity a bit. We would have to get Ireland to acknowledge that the idea it was “abortion-free” or that the kind of women who travel were abstract “bad people” – criminals, hussies – was a fallacy. I mean, some of us are hussies, too. But that’s another story. Later that summer, I got a call from Colm O’Gorman of Amnesty International Ireland. Could I MC a gig for them? They were going to be at the Electric Picnic festival talking about Amnesty’s global “She is not a criminal” campaign on reproductive rights, and its focus on Ireland. Here was my platform. No chickening out now. “I could MC it,” I said, my voice quivering as I summoned up the courage, “or I could share some lived experience.”

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And so I told my story in a tent in rural County Laois while basslines boomed from nearby stages. People in the tent stood up and spoke of their own journeys. They cried. I cried. I’ve barely stopped since. That same week, Róisín’s story was published. We got abuse, both vicious and vocal. We were told we were “too much”, that we were scaring people. But we knew that wasn’t true. We knew that, if we all just kept talking to each other, people would find out. That the woman sitting next to you on the bus is “that woman”. That the woman on the telly is. Your daughter is. You could be. I am that woman. Conversations have been had all across the country. Tears shed. Hands held. And those conversations shattered secrets and shame and gave faces to a hidden issue.

And the ending to the story is that on Saturday, Ireland set us free.

• Tara Flynn is an actor and comedian