Abortion access in Northern Ireland remains scant, despite rising rates of women opting for them across the UK

I News UK ^ | Jul 7, 2021 | Rachel Mantock

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Last year, there were a record number of abortions in England and Wales. A total of 209,917 were reported in 2020, and the rate of abortion, at 18.2 per 1,000 women, was the highest since the Abortion Act came into effect in 1968, according to the latest Office for National Statistics data.

Whatever the complex reasons behind the rise in abortion rates, they show that more people are acting on their right to terminate a pregnancy, despite the stigma still associated with it. In England, Scotland and Wales, women generally have access to abortion services when they want or need them. In Northern Ireland, it’s a different story, with many people still having to pay for flights to England or elsewhere if they want an abortion. While abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland in 2019, abortion services there are still scarce.

Kellie O’Dowd is a project manager at the recently established charity Abortion Talk, which runs an abortion support hotline, and she’s based in Northern Ireland. She tells i that the elation campaigners felt after abortion was decriminalised distracted from the reality of the situation: that there was plenty of work still to do in actually bringing abortion services into existence.

[Rurudyne]

Baby murdering … one is one too many

[Seruzawa]

Legalizing abortion just isn’t enough. These “oppressed” women aren’t immediately lining up to murder their babies en masse. We need to do something about this until we reach the “norms” of infanticide we desire.

Pure unadulterated evil.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Protestant-am I right?

[Tomato lover]

“Legalizing abortion just isn’t enough.”

If those “oppressed” women would just stop sleeping around before marriage. . . they wouldn’t have to carry the weight of infanticide for life.