In this episode, Rosie MacLeod explores the historic Irish abortion referendum of May 25th, 2018, when the Republic of Ireland voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment and legalise abortion on demand up to 12 weeks gestation. With a 66.4% majority and 64.1% turnout, this staunchly Catholic nation fundamentally shifted its stance on reproductive rights. The episode examines the factors that drove this change: the weekly exodus of approximately 100 Irish women travelling to the UK for abortions, the dangerous practice of women ordering unregulated abortion pills online, and the tragic death of dentist Savita Halappanavar in 2012, whose case became a catalyst for change.
Rosie speaks with Kate Smurthwaite, former Vice Chair of Abortion Rights UK, who provides crucial context about the limitations of Ireland’s previous law—which only permitted abortion when a mother’s life (not health) was in danger. Through powerful discussion of real cases, including Savita’s, Kate illustrates how vague legislation left doctors afraid to act even in life-threatening situations. The conversation challenges the notion that abortion decisions fit into neat categories, arguing instead that women’s reasons for seeking terminations are complex, personal, and equally valid, whether driven by health concerns, disability diagnoses, financial circumstances, or personal aspirations.
Main Topics
On May 25th, 2018, Ireland voted 66.4% in favour of repealing the Eighth Amendment to legalise abortion up to 12 weeks gestation
Approximately 100 Irish women per week travelled to the UK for abortions, creating a two-tiered system where only affluent women could access safe procedures
Over 6,000 unregulated abortion pills were sent to Ireland in the past decade, highlighting the dangers women faced under prohibition
The death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012 became a pivotal catalyst for change, demonstrating how the law's distinction between 'life' and 'health' endangered women's lives
Ireland's previous law created a chilling effect on doctors, who feared prosecution and were reluctant to act even in clearly life-threatening situations
The discussion challenges hierarchies of abortion justifications, arguing that all women's reasons for seeking terminations are equally valid
Disability cases reveal the complexity of abortion ethics, with anti-choice campaigners often conflating minor conditions with severe, life-limiting diagnoses
Full TranscriptHello. Welcome to another episode of Politically Motivated here on the women's radio station. This is the station that c...▼
Hello. Welcome to another episode of Politically Motivated here on the women's radio station. This is the station that connects women all over the globe. From our studio here in London, I'm Rosie MacLeod. In this show, I take a look at the grassroots campaigners working to make the world a better place for women and girls. This episode comes to you in the aftermath of an historical referendum in the Republic of Ireland. On Friday 25th May, the country voted to legalise abortion on demand for up until 12 weeks gestation. Though historically a pro life country, terminations were most recently forbidden in Ireland by the Constitution's Eighth Amendment. Introduced in 1983. The clause treats the life of both mother and unborn child equally, making abortion illegal unless the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. Consequently, accessing or performing an illegal abortion had until now carried a sentence of 14 years. With a turnout of 64.1%, the people of Ireland voted to overturn the 8th amendment with a split of 66.4%, voting to repeal the 8th and 33.6% to keep it. All but one of the country's 40 constituencies voted in favour of repealing, the exception being Donegal. The result was backed by the country's Prime Minister, or Tishaw, who has proposed to alter the legislation in accordance with the result by the end of the calendar year. So what prompted a staunchly Catholic country to challenge the Catholic values at its heart? Firstly, a high number of Irish women travelling abroad to access abortions, 100 a week to the mainland UK alone. Travelling to mainland UK for a termination has long been an open secret in Ireland and is often known as going shopping in London for a few days. A phrase that refers to anything but the need to travel and pay for the treatment abroad doubtless disenfranchises women who cannot meet the costs. Women trapped on drugs and in the sex trade, those without a passport, and women who are already very unwell and unable to travel. Surely it was time to extend the freedom to choose to all women in Ireland and not just the better off. Secondly, the tendency for Irish women to order abortion pills online. The Health Products Regulatory Authority has verified more than 6,000 abortion pills sent its way from envelopes and searches in the past decade alone. Not all of those pills could have come from more recent and more trusted sites such as Women on Web, making it impossible to guarantee the safety of the pills frequently taken by women in Ireland. Thirdly, the case of Savita Halapponava in 2012, who was working as a dentist in Ireland 17 weeks into her pregnancy it became apparent that miscarriage was inevitable and she requested an abortion. This was denied as medical professionals ruled her life was not in danger. She consequently developed sepsis and died from a resultant cardiac arrest. Her death reignited the need to discuss abortion in Ireland. Here I am speaking to Kate Smurthwaite, the former Vice Chair of Abortion Rights uk, before the Irish vote. Here she is speaking in favour of lifting Ireland's ban on abortion. Now, abortion in Ireland is supposed to be allowed when the mother's life is in danger. Not the mother's health, just the mother's life. But, yeah, that's true and it's actually a really important point. I have actually met a woman who had a pregnancy preeclampsia and was told that she would lose her eyesight if she continued the pregnancy. And they were like, that's not your life, so you have to go blind and not have an abortion. And of course she traveled to somewhere else and got the service that she wanted. But, yeah, it's like we sort of think, oh, well, it's all right if the mother's life's at danger. But actually that's a very, very important distinction between the mother's life being in danger and her health and, well, being being danger. Like, there's a lot of things that can happen to your health and well being that aren't life threatening, that actually are so serious that you know that to not offer women protection against those situations is pretty cruel and unusual. Absolutely. But one lady whose life was in danger was dentist Savita Hana Panava. And because of her medical background, she knew what was happening to her and she said, I need a termination of her much wanted pregnancy. She didn't get that. Why is that? Is it because Catholicism is so deeply woven into the fabric of Irish society that they have. Do they have Catholic nuns on hospital wards? Well, we don't know the details. We do know that Savita Halapponova was told when she. When she said to the medical professionals around her that she needed an abortion, she was told, this is a Catholic country and that might be a reflection of their religion. It might also be a bit of sort of fairly subtle racism because obviously she was from a, you know, a South Asian background and, you know, there was a sense of like, oh, you don't understand. Our country says white person to brown person. This is what it's like here. You can't just have that here. But the issue at heart there is that it's quite clear her life was at risk. We know that because she lost her life. It is not always clear when somebody's life is at risk. You know, like we know that something is going wrong medically, is it life threatening or is it just going to cause problems? And what it feels like with Savita is that a lot of doctors around her, because of the way the law is, they didn't feel confident to say, yes, I think it's at risk and I'm going to perform the procedure. They were like, well, if she doesn't die, you know, will I get in trouble? And the law isn't clear about doctors being safe from that. So that's a good reason why we, you know, among other reasons why we need to clarify the law. And it's heartbreaking because, as you say, Savita, a dentist herself, knew exactly what was going on and quite openly said, this is what you need to do. And because she was so ill, she couldn't travel. If she had been less ill, she would have gotten on a plane to London and she'd still be with us. Obviously, there was a huge surge of activism around the Savita case. And if you go to protests, you will see pictures of Savita. And it was a huge case as well because of Savita's husband. So it would have been very easy for people around Savita to say, I don't want any press, I don't want to talk to people, I don't want my name in the papers, I don't want my photo in the papers. And Savita's husband ignored all of that and said, I'm furious, I'm angry and I'm going to talk about it. And you know, everybody was warning him, you know, the anti choices are going to call you a liar. They're going to criticize your late wife. They're going to, you know, claim that they're going to say everything. They're going to say that your relationship was a disaster. They're going to criticize your lifestyle, they're going to criticize everything. You know, no sort of stone will be left unturned. And it's going to be super intrusive. And, you know, if you want to, you can, you know, step out of the limelight and refuse to say anything and avoid some of that. And Savita's husband said, no, you know, this is my wife and I want to talk about it. And I don't care if they're rotten to me, I'm going to keep going. So his strength was really, really important, I think, to the campaign. But it's also the case that it comes up over and over again. You know, we've had lots more cases, many of which, you know, we don't know the actual names of the people involved because. But you know, that there was a child who, a woman who's told that her child wouldn't survive birth and she wanted to have a termination. They were like, no, no, you have to like wait and then have a stillbirth. And you know, there've been all these cases, they come up all the time. And of course there's also 100 cases a week of women getting on a plane and showing up in London. And, you know, they don't all make the news. They don't appear in the glossy ryanair brochures about, you know, why people are flying across the Irish channel. But ultimately there's no shortage of case studies of people in difficult situations. It is never the case with abortion that it's like, it's never a simple thing. It's never like, I wanted a baby, but now it's a Wednesday and I don't. It's not a question of like this, you know, A or B. It's a question of a whole set of circumstances and it's super complicated. And so many. So often, you know, when you dig into it, there's a sort of heartbreak there of like, you know, there's a financial problem, there's a health problem, there's a relationship that's falling apart or turning violent and all this kind of stuff. And it's so difficult. It's really tricky, the issue around disability. And it's tricky for a couple of reasons. And the first is that what we would really like to do about disability, I think what we'd all like to do is live in a society where there's enough support for young people with disabilities. But we also, we sort of forget. I think often it's really easy for the anti choice campaigners to be talking about minor disabilities and saying, oh, you know, it would be okay for a child to, you know, don't be so discriminatory against children with minor conditions and forget that some of these abortions are taking place in situations where the child wouldn't be expected to live more on a couple of weeks, where they would be in horrific pain, where they would have absolutely zero quality of life. And, you know, and of course in those circumstances to force somebody into parenthood is particularly cruel. But interestingly, I mean, we've already inevitably started talking about special situations and I'm sure we could keep talking about, you know, rape, we could keep talking about birth defects. We could keep talking about when the mother's health is at risk. We could, we could go on and talk about, for example, mental health situations. And we often talk about, about the mother's well being, being at risk. But, you know, I mean, postnatal depression is the most common form of depression. And if you already have a series of existing mental health problems, if you're already suffering mentally with all sorts of issues to risk, you know, throwing postnatal depression into that can throw an enormous spanner into the works. We could talk about very young women. We could talk about situations of interest, we could talk about all this kind of stuff. And kind of, ultimately, I consider that kind of a distraction because I don't think that one woman's reason for wanting an abortion is more or less valid than another. You know, if you said that you wanted to continue with a pregnancy even though you knew the fetus had all sorts of problems and there was going to be, you know, a very limited life expectancy for the baby, I'd still be like, well, I'm cool with that. If that's what you want to do, I think you should do that. And if you said that you had a good job and a spare bedroom and a husband who adored you and two happy children, an expensive school, having a wonderful time, but you just didn't want to continue with your latest pregnancy, I'd be like, okay, that's your choice. It's really interesting. There was a case in the UK a few years ago of a woman who said that she wanted a termination because she wanted to focus on her career as a glamour model. And, oh, and there was outrage and all this kind of, that's ridiculous. And that's, you know, that's, that's, that's not okay. And all this kind of stuff. And yet, you know, if a young woman says she wants a termination because she wants to complete her qualifications as a doctor, we all go, oh, well, you know, she's made, she's making a choice for herself. And ultimately, you know, yeah, being a glamour model, it's not my career choice either. But you just kind of have to go, well, it's your body and it's your choice. And even if you're making a ridiculous choice, as long as the uterus is yours, you know, I don't feel like we have the right to sort of requisition the use. You know, women are human beings. We're not walking sperm incubators. We have the right to decide what we do with our uteruses. You know, in the same way that there is somebody in a hospital near here who needs a kidney and you've got two kidneys and you could donate a kidney and that would be a wonderful, lovely thing to do. But I don't think anybody should force you to use your body in that way to make you donate a kidney. And I don't think anyone should force you to give up nine months of your life using all of your organs to support somebody else, you know, a fetus. If you choose to do it, that's your choice and you can choose to do it under whatever circumstances you want. And if you choose not to do it, like, I'm, I'm just, I just. For me, it's, you know, it's about the woman's autonomy rather than about trying to understand her reasoning and see if we agree with it. But I'm also super terrified about the vote, the referendum in the Republic. I feel like it's super close. As we've discussed, women in Southern Ireland can only access abortion if their life is in danger. And people say, oh, they travel over to mainland UK to access abortion services. But what about the women who cannot afford to travel? There have been cases of women drinking bleach. Women in Southern Ireland also access very dangerous, unpoliced abortion pills from the Internet. And this doesn't seem to be a concern for pro lifers who, I've got to say it, the majority of the most outspoken pro lifers that have been seen on Irish television are men. And if a cow falls ill during pregnancy, a vet will abort a calf. So they literally put the life of a cow above the life of a female human in Southern Ireland? Oh, yeah. I mean, so. So, of course, lots of women travel and it's great. I mean, people talk, you know, improved access to abortion and, you know, and people fail to have a round of applause for Ryanair. But, you know, honestly, Ryanair, the fact that they've got such discounted flights, it's. It makes a huge difference. It is absolutely saving women's lives. And the fact that women can get over here. But of course, there are women who can't. Yes, there's women who can't afford to travel, but there's actually another whole slew of super complicated situations. There's women who don't have a passport because their refugee status is being sorted out or they're waiting for a visa. There's women who have other medical conditions that make it not safe or not possible for them to fly. There's women who are in abusive relationships, women with a drug addiction problem, women trapped in the sex industry who haven't got the freedoms that other women have. You know, there are all sorts of reasons why a woman might not have the freedom to travel. And, you know, very young women, you know, you can't, if you're 12, you can't just buy a Ryanair flight. You know, you need to get someone to come with you and all that kind of stuff. So there are lots and lots of women for whom the hop on a plane to London solution isn't a solution. And of course, they're the women in the most difficult situations. They're not the women, you know, who can find a way around this. You know, I mean, I had an abortion in 2003 and I was living in Tokyo at the time. And, you know, as soon as I realized I was pregnant, I googled how do you get an abortion in Tokyo? And I also then googled flights to London. How do I get abortion in London? And honestly, if there had been only one province in the north of Canada where abortion had been legal, I would have googled flights to that one province in the very north of Canada, the one where abortion is legal. And I would have flown to Nova Scotia or wherever it was that I could have got those services. And so blocks and restrictions on access to abortion, they never affect, you know, well educated, healthy, you know, financially solvent middle class women with access to good information and a strong support network around them. They always affect women from, you know, poverty backgrounds, women from minority backgrounds, women from complicated backgrounds, women who've already got a pile of problems in their lives, women who can least afford to compound those problems with an unwanted child. You know, so it's so, yeah, so they sort of hop on a plane. It's a great solution and I'm glad it exists for so many women, but it's not, you know, it's not the ultimate solution. It also creates a great deal of stigma. Now in terms of online pills, yeah, there is definitely an issue where women who can't access an abortion safely will end up looking at other options. And there are some horrific things going on. You know, we all know the horror stories about coat hangers and bleach and, you know, all that, all this kind of stuff. And we also know horror stories about getting pills online and they're not what they say they are. Women's radio station will give a voice to your brand, advertise your product, services or goods on air with a package tailored to suit you. For more information, visit womensradiostation.com@distinctively me we're passionate about making clothes that complement any body shape through our Made to Measure tailored pieces. Distinctively Me Smart and elegant clothes are made in our London studio from the highest quality fabrics and will create the perfect outfit for any woman. Our trousers, skirts and jackets are modern yet timeless and can be worn season after season. Visit us@distinctivelymeat.com to be amazed at our service and prices. Distinctively me discover the pleasure of Made to Measure. 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Then take on the Pink ribbon walk for breast cancer. Coming to Oxfordshire and Essex this summer, we've got everything covered from snacks along the route to a massage and medal when you cross the finish line. And while we support you with every step, you'll be doing something special to support the thousands of people going through one of the toughest challenges they'll ever face. Breast cancer, visit breastcancercare.org.uk walk. Women's radio. Women. Now the vote showed that not everybody views abortion as a woman's bodily autonomy. One group who opposed repealing the Eighth Amendment is the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. Here I am speaking to the organisation's media spokesperson, Alithia Williams, at their headquarters in London. Hello, nice to be with you. So on Friday 25th May, we're going to see a historical referendum in Ireland. The people will vote on whether to repeal the 8th amendment and give women full autonomy over their bodies. What's your response to this? Well, that's one way of putting it. What I would say is that they are going to vote, you know, if it goes through, they'll be voting for the first time to remove the right to life, well, from people, but from the unborn child. So it is definitely a very significant moment and obviously we really hope that Ireland will not go down this route and will continue to protect babies and their mothers. You say to protect their mothers. If the 8th amendment isn't repealed, women will die. That is the reality of it. If the 8th amendment is not repealed, women who cannot afford to get a Ryanair flight to come to Marie Stopes in London will just access dangerous, unsafe abortions. Drinking bleach, performing abortions on themselves, using coat hangers that can cause your uterus to fall out Performing abortions on themselves using a knitting needle that can cause damage to fallopian tubes. Well, I would question a lot of what you just said there. You know, we're not living 100 years ago. Nobody is using coat hangers. Nobody would suggest that anyone uses coat hangers. Yes, people do sometimes take abortion pills and that should be cracked down on because obviously you shouldn't be getting illegal abortion pills coming into the country. Though I think it's important to note that in this country where medical abortion has now overtaken surgical abortion, there are lots of complications around that. You know, we saw the CQC were having to discipline Marie Stopes and be pass around around these things. They had people being taken to hospital to follow up after abortion pills. It just doesn't always work as well. It's not true to say that people are dying because of the eighth Amendment. Obstetricians have been coming out on both sides saying that no woman has died as a result of the eighth Amendment. Maternal health care in Ireland is some of the best in the world. It's actually much better than Britain's. So, you know, in Britain we have a maternal death rate of 8.8 per 100,000. In Ireland it's 6.5. It's a lot worse in the US, 26.7. Both of these places, UK and the US have had legal abortion for years. And also people import abortion pills into this country where it's legal. So it's just not true. The 8th amendment is life saving. It saves the lives of babies. And it's important to note what the eighth Amendment actually says. It says it recognises the right to life of the unborn with due regard to the right to life of the mother. It protects both. Yes. That means that if the mother's life is in danger, then they can terminate. But if her health is in danger, she has to go through with the pregnancy. If she's got preeclampsia and she's going to go blind, she still has to go through with the pregnancy. That's not true. That's what happened in Ireland. That is nonsense. That's not true. No. Ireland is a first world country. People are not dying and going blind during pregnancy. You say women are not using coat hangers. Gin. And coat hangers is long gone. My mum was born in the 1950s in London. She was 15 when the 1967 Abortion act came in. And in the school playground, it was no secret that there were lots of abortionists operating in London. And coat hangers was the method that they Used. That's no secret. That is one thing that within living memory has been happening. Well, I think you just kind of made your own point there. That was before, that was 50 years ago, before the act came in. And while you say it was well known, you know, people who fought to bring in the act have said that they exaggerated a lot of the numbers. But again, even if that is the case, you know, 50 years ago we didn't have proper antibiotics, we didn't have penicillin, we didn't, you know, we didn't have lots of these things, you know, and if abortion were to become illegal now, people wouldn't be doing well. Actually, no, sorry to go back to that point. Most illegal abortions before the act came in were still done by licensed doctors. They just did it out of the back of their Harley street clinics. That was how it happened. And there's no reason to suspect it would be any different. But obviously I'm not advocating for illegal abortion. I don't advocate for abortion at all. I think there are better solutions to crisis pregnancies. I think people, governments and people should be working to make sure that nobody is ever in that kind of situation. No woman should ever feel that desperate that they would resort to any of these methods, legal or illegal. Now on that point, one argument that I've seen and heard put forward a lot of times is adoption is the better option. But adoption is a really emotionally draining, difficult process. It stays with the mother for the rest of her life and often after many, many years, when the child has grown up, they want to reunite. And often that's very difficult and often that is a mistake. So actually adoption can be a really difficult process to go through. You're actually asking someone to go through something very difficult to carry around for the rest of their life. Yeah, of course. Obviously I think adoption is a wonderful life giving thing. But I don't think we always say, you know, it's not abortion or adoption. I think actually most women who decide against abortion in the end end up parroting themselves. Yes. So it's not just one or the other. Also, you know, obviously adoption can be wonderful and people are very glad, you know, they're very thankful that their birth mother gave them life. But I don't think anyone, you know, nobody on the abortion side of the debate is wanting to delegate adoption as an idea. I think that's a bit of an odd argument. Another argument I've heard put forward is that the eighth Amendment is more progressive. Is this because it allows disabled babies the right to Life, no matter how difficult, how problematic their situation is going to be. I definitely think the Eighth Amendment's progressive. It's progressive to be. To be enshrining the right to life of every person. You know, it's horrendous that other countries do not do that. You know, in this country, we have people, we have babies being aborted because they have down syndrome, because they have cleft palate. And actually it's something really noticeable. If you go to Ireland, you see more people around who have disabilities, who have down syndrome. And what abortion does is it changes how a society feels about these people. You know, when it becomes an option, that's on the table. You know, when you have a mother who gets this diagnosis and the first thing the doctor says is, you know, do you want to continue with this pregnancy? Do you want to terminate? It really changes it. And I think, you know, in our society, when we're so careful to advocate for the rights of the disabled, rightly we want to make sure everything is accessible, we make sure people can get jobs. And then just to have this awful discrimination, as we have at the moment in Britain, where generally abortion is up to 24 weeks, but for the disabled, it's up to birth. That's just not a mark of a progressive society. The limit that's been proposed in Ireland if the 8th amendment is repealed is 12 weeks. Sir Isaac Newton said that once the foetus has gained sensation, that's when it sort of stops being a fetus and starts being an unborn child. And medical professionals agree that 16 weeks marks that change. Ideally, I would say 14 weeks, to err on the side of caution. How do you respond to that? Well, I'm going to say I've never heard that one. I mean, I just think any line that you draw is an arbitrary one because the unborn child develops in a continuum from the point of conception to the point of birth. I've never even heard 16 weeks suggested as a limit before the heart starts beating at 21 days. People still argue about when pain begins. I'm not really sure that's an argument. I can't kill you because you might be asleep and so not feeling pain. Pain isn't really the point. And I think medicine has also moved on since Sir Isaac Newton. We have ultrasounds now. Some of the most powerful posters, I think, in Ireland are the images of the unborn child in the womb that are 12 weeks, and you can see that they're a perfectly formed human baby. And actually there was a debate on an island Last week where an obstetrician, somebody was saying that the baby is not formed at 12 weeks. And he was like, he read out the text from the nhs saying at 12 weeks the baby is perfectly formed, it just has to grow. On the one hand I say that 24 weeks is far too late, but on the other hand, there are, and ideally I would like 14 weeks cut off point in an ideal world. But then you have so many horror stories. You have women who cannot leave the house because they're being controlled by their partner, women without passports, so they can't actually get into the country that they need to, to access treatment. You may be in a situation where your much wanted pregnancy takes a turn for the worse. You might have a very disabled child that you're going to bring into the world. The tablets I take for my adult acne, I cannot get pregnant on them because they cause very severe disabilities, yellow teeth and soft bones. You can't bring anyone into the world under those circumstances. They're just going to have an existence and not a life. You might be employed and then you get pregnant. And so many women report that their bosses are really hostile to them when they say they're pregnant and they're going to go on maternity leave. There are just so many variations and so many different stories that you cannot make it a one size fits all. Well, all these things you're pointing out, these are all dreadful situations for women to be in. But I don't think you're saying how abortion would help that. You know, if you've got a controlling husband, that's an awful thing. We want to try and help women get out of that situation. And it's often controlling husbands who coerce women into abortion. And that's dreadful. And, you know, and if you've got awful bosses discriminating against you for pregnancy, then that's something as a society we need to be changing. That's not acceptable. No woman should be having an abortion because she has a terrible husband or a terrible boss. That's just not okay. So another pro life argument I've heard is that being a mother is the best and the greatest thing that a woman can be, and that pro life is therefore women's liberation. But who has the right to dictate other people's life choices? I mean, I think we should encourage people if they're not work, if they're not using all their talents, but if someone is pregnant and does not want to be, no one has the right to say, you must continue that pregnancy, you must have Labour pains enforced upon you, and you must have motherhood forced upon you. You're pregnant, you don't want to be. No one has the right to force you into it. Well, honestly, I don't think anyone has the right to force someone into motherhood. You know, that that would be talking rape, really, which obviously nobody is for. Well, I think we have to remember is when a woman is pregnant, there is another person there. There is a human being who is growing in her womb. And while we care deeply about the mother and the situations that she may be in, we can't forget that there is another person there. She's not, you know, it's not that we're saying she has to be a mother. Once a baby is conceived, she is a mother, it's already there. And the only choice there is do you then go on, you know, do you have a live baby or do you have an abortion and have a dead baby? There is the baby, is there no contraceptive, is 100% effective. Not even the coil, not even the implant, the 12 of the three that are said to be the most effective. And it's like with green issues, people say, well, people should use public transport more, but until they put a better transport system in place, people are going to use cars because of the transport system not being as good as it could be. And it's the same with contraception. Until we have a method that is 100% effective, we need to have abortion services in place. Because otherwise, as I say, you're forcing someone to be pregnant against their will. Again, I'm not forcing anybody to be pregnant. Once somebody is pregnant, there is a child there. In all this, you're not recognizing that there is a child. And I don't think that the state or anyone can say that it's okay to kill somebody because of difficult circumstances. So pro life and feminism, is it possible? That's an interesting one. It's not a term that I tend to use. I just don't necessarily find it helpful. But lots of people do. I think just because there is this implication that to be feminist, it's so tied up with the pro choice idea now, but there's nothing empowering about telling women that they can't have children or that they can't cope or that they can't, they can't do this, they can't do that. It's not empowering to pit women against their children. So I think from that point of view, it's definitely possible. Well, thank you very much for speaking to me. Thank you following the vote, questions will inevitably be raised about the situation in Northern Ireland where the UK 1967 Abortion act still does not apply. Like their counterparts in the Republic, 40 women a week make the journey from Northern Ireland to mainland UK to end their pregnancies and they are treated as overseas patients. That means they are charged between 600 and 2,000 pounds even though they live in the same country that the Abortion act applies to. There have been cases of women being duped by loan sharks in a bid to access a service that would be freely available to them were they resident in another part of the same country. The issue is not one that's going to die away overnight and we'll be keeping you updated here on the Women's Radio station. That's all for now. Do tune in next time when I'll be looking at another grassroots campaign working for a better world for women and girls. 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