10 Women

1 Day

The Statistics of Irish Abortions

Emer Ellis-Neenan
 This short collection of vignettes is fictional, but it is based on a true story...

It is based on the available statistics for women accessing abortion in Ireland.

Statistics can be impersonal, but they are important. They can tell us what is usual, what is typical, what is
expected. And they can tell us what is rare, what is improbable.

These ten fictional women reflect the daily, typical reality of Irish abortions. Their experiences reflect the
data collected by Irish charities, the British National Health Service, and independent researchers. Their
ages reflect the distribution of ages of Irish women who access an abortion. Their names were chosen from
the three most common names of the year they were born, based on CSO data. Their reasons reflect the
most common reasons given by Irish women when asked by researchers why they decided to have an
abortion. Only three are 9 weeks pregnant or more, and none are more than 17 weeks pregnant. Late
abortions are very rare; we would need to tell 40 women’s stories to have one about an abortion at 17 or
more weeks gestation. We would need to tell over 1,500 women’s stories to have one about an abortion in
the third trimester of pregnancy.

This collection is therefore not intended to describe the full range of experiences of people who have
abortions. It is intended to describe what is typical, what is most common, what happens most often.

One statistically average day.

Ten Irish women.
Chloe wakes up knowing what day it is. Hello Kitty is flashing “5:57” at her and her stomach feels heavy. Her
stomach doesn’t look any different, though. The embryo isn’t even 3 cm long. She googled it last night,
huddled with the cool comfort of her phone when everyone else was asleep.

She grabs the clock before it can start beeping, but she can’t bring herself to get out of bed. Her dad’s
“conference suitcase” is packed: laptop and a change of clothes. It’s waiting at the foot of her bed.

The door cracks open and her mother’s head appears, hazy and pale against the morning half-light.

“Are you up, love?”

Chloe forces herself to sit up. “Yeah, just getting dressed.” Like she’s back doing her mocks. “Is there time for
a cup of tea?”

“You can’t have tea.” Her mother’s voice is quiet. The rest of the house is still asleep. “You can’t have anything
before it.”

“Oh.”

She writes a text to Jack as she brushes her teeth, avoiding her pale face in the cold bathroom mirror. She
doesn’t send it. No way he’s awake.

She didn’t realise you could get pregnant your first time. Jack didn’t either, from how he’d reacted when she
told him.

“Lpool today…. Nervous…..”

Chloe, 18
Sinéad checks her phone, her coat on, her bag by the door.

“I have to go. If I miss the 8 am bus I’ll miss the flight.” She kisses Aidan and dodges an enthusiastically
brandished spoon to give both twins a last squeeze. “See you tonight.”

“Sorry I can’t give you a lift. If it was tomorrow I could pick you up...”

She waves Aidan’s regrets off, grabbing her bag. “If it was tomorrow, I wouldn’t have the day off work. Tell
your mother thanks again for watching these the rascals, okay? I really have to go.”

One of the twins starts screaming as she closes the door and she almost cries. This could be a day off. She
could be bringing the toddlers to the park.

Bus journeys are awful at the best of times. She gets bus sick, even without morning sickness. But the
clinic website emphasised that she shouldn’t drive afterwards. Of course, she also shouldn’t fly, probably.
She should have someone with her. She should rest tomorrow instead of going back to work. There are
lots of shoulds. Her favourite “should” was her doctor’s:

“The pill should have worked.”

Apparently, due to mistakes, vomiting, and interactions with other drugs, 9 in 100 women on the pill
actually get pregnant every year. She’d looked that up, along with the clinic her sympathetic doctor
recommended. Verbally. He hadn’t written the name down, even though she’d asked.

Sinéad, 39
Laura fumbles for the post-it with the clinic’s address on it as she walks towards the taxi rank, feeling
uncharacteristically shy. She doesn’t want to say where she’s going out loud.

The whole thing already feels like a dream. She’d missed a call from her mother and was so worried
that something had happened to Jenny at créche that she’d almost forgotten her handbag getting
off the flight. Turns out mam just was just checking in, like she used to when Laura was on school
tours. It made her feel like she was fifteen again instead of almost twice that and a mother herself, but
she was grateful.

She gets into the back seat of the taxi and wordlessly hands the driver the address.

“Ah,” he says. “I might have guessed.”

Laura presses her lips together and grips her handbag as tightly as she can, but he turns in his seat to
meet her eyes. “Sorry you had to come all this way. I’ve seen a few of you come through, and back,
looking queasy. The traffic’s not great at the moment, so I’m not going to turn on the meter. We’ll just
call it five pound, okay?”

She manages a smile. She manages not to cry. “Thanks.”

“No problem, love.” He turns away and pulls out. “I wouldn’t like to see my own girl alone if she got in
trouble like that.”

Laura, 29
Mary checks her phone again. 12:32. Just like it was thirty seconds ago. She forces herself to put her phone
into her handbag. She’s just making herself anxious. It’s because she’s here alone, no one to talk to to distract
herself.

She should have brought a book, and she’d meant to, but it was total chaos getting out of the house this
morning. It’s usually her that drives the kids to school and Pat wasn’t prepared for the sheer amount of
“where’s my lunchbox, calculator, hockey stick, pencilcase?”

Bridget had arrived to pick her up while she was still shouting “in your room, on the couch, in the fridge, by
the door, where you left it!” and looking for her own shoes.

So now she’s in this thoughtfully generic waiting room, waiting, with nothing to do but check her phone and
fidget. She’d already dismissed the available magazines and examined all the posters.

One of the women is reading the Irish Times, glancing anxiously at the pale teenager beside her. There are
two young women whispering in Cork accents, and another woman had a series of hurried, hushed phone
calls about getting a flight back to Dublin tonight instead of two days from now. They’ve all seen one
another, they all know. There’s been a few awkward smiles and nods. Not many.

Mary guesses, of the Irish women here, she’s closest in age to the mother with the teenager. The girl is
probably only a few years older than her own Diarmuid.

She’d thought she was past this, thought she’d closed up shop. She’d always wanted three, and she had
them. Her ridiculous, disorganised family is perfect as it is.

She’s always complaining she wants some peace and quiet, but she’d love to have her noisy gang here now.

Mary, 45
Michelle can’t help but be amused. How often has she wished for a city break? She hasn’t been
outside Ireland since her 30th, almost two years ago now. No one wants to travel with a baby and a
toddler. No one wants to babysit them for more than a couple of hours either.

And now here she is, in the Whitworth gallery in Manchester, with nothing to do for the next few
hours except decide which cafe to have lunch in.

Except she’s alone and nauseated and she has to be back at Marie Stopes by 5 pm to take the other
half of the medical abortion, so she can catch her flight home tonight. Some city break.

Be careful what you wish for, isn’t that it?

She stares unseeing at an echoing room of tiny paintings. Maybe she should have invited that other
Irish girl to come with her. They’d chatted in the waiting room. What was her name, Lauren? Laura?
They’d agreed to share a taxi back to the airport; they’re on the same flight back.

With a sigh, she turns to head back to the gallery’s cafe. She’ll treat herself to a slice of cheesecake
and look at photos of Emily and Conor instead of high art. She’s doing it for them. She can’t risk
another post-partum depression, can’t go off the anti-depressants. It had been awful for baby Conor
and worse for Emily, having a parent like a zombie.

She never thought she would have an abortion, but it’s different when you’re a mother.

Michelle, 31
Sarah expects to feel different when she wakes up, but she just feels woozy. There’s a bad taste in her mouth
and for some reason her shoulders ache.

“Hi, Sarah. You’re all finished, pet.”

She tries to sit up, and instead just starts crying. The tiny nurse comes over immediately and presses a tissue
into her hand.

“It’s alright, pet, it’s okay. Is something wrong? Is it pain?”

Sarah shakes her head, pressing the tissue to her face, half-laughing in that wet, uncontrolled way, her
cheeks hot and her voice caught in her throat. “No, no. Well, a little, yeah, I’m okay, I’m sorry, I’m okay.”

The nurse pats her knee. “Take a minute, love, take a deep breath.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry.” She wants to stop apologising.

“It’s fine, don’t worry, pet, it’s absolutely fine. Your friend is waiting, do you want me to get her? Ellen, was it?”

Sarah shakes her head. “I’m fine.” She finally takes that deep breath. “I’m fine, I’m just,” she laughs, it’s not
funny but she keeps laughing, “I’m just relieved, I’m just tired. I’m really tired. I’ve been so worried. I can’t have
a baby.”

The nurse looks worried too. “Are you flying home tonight?”

She shakes her head again. “No, we’re staying, my mam paid for a hotel, she didn’t like me to be flying
straight away. We’re back to Cork tomorrow.”

Sarah, 26
Lisa sits as still as she can, gripping the armrests, her eyes on the Fasten Seatbelts sign. How long does it
usually take to turn off? It feels like they’ve levelled off. Have they?

The light switches off with an authoritative ding, and she’s out of her seat at once.

The amount of blood startles her. She cleans herself up as best she can in the cramped 737 bathroom and
washes her hands twice. They weren’t kidding about the bleeding. She has a full pack of extra-long nighttime
pads with her, but she’s starting to worry it’s not enough.

Will they fine you or something if you bleed on an airplane seat? Or will they just be worried? Should she tell
them? She tries to imagine whispering “I’m just after having an abortion” to the flight attendant with the
neatly cropped afro and the pristine pink lipstick.

She’d planned to let this all happen in a hotel room, watching terrible movies and ordering room service.
She’d even booked it, but her boss called. Apologised for interrupting her at the “dentist”. Offered her a
presentation at the meeting with the Japanese buyers tomorrow morning. It’s exactly that kind of
opportunity she can’t afford to miss. That kind of last-minute phone call is why she can’t have a kid.

She’s worked herself to the bone in the ten years since she graduated and she loves everything about her job.
She’s not letting a broken condom and a decent night with Eoin-from-accounting ruin her life.

Back in her seat, she pulls a packet of extra-strength ibuprofen and her laptop out of her bag.

Lisa, 33
Niamh pulls in to the lane beside her sister’s house and sits for a minute in the dark, rubbing her eyes. She
has a headache and she can’t remember which painkiller you’re not supposed to take when you’re taking
abortion pills. Was it aspirin or paracetamol?

She’d been hoping to get back in time to put Ava to bed, but it’s well past 8 pm as she lets herself in. Eimear
sticks her head out of the kitchen. “There you are! I texted you, I thought you’d be sooner.”

Niamh collapses in a chair in the kitchen and tosses her precious envelope down. “Traffic. And my phone
died.”

“The kids are all in bed. Ava was fussy, you know yourself, but she settled. My two are just gone up, and
himself is out with the lads.”

Eimear takes a plate out of the oven: a helping of lasagne and a few oven chips. “Thought you’d be hungry, I
kept you some.”

“You’re a star. Best sister and-or landlord ever.”

“Is this it?” Eimear sits beside her and picks up the envelope. The pills in their blister pack slide out, followed
by the leaflet and the empty blister from the pill she’d already taken.

Niamh nods. “After all that. The stress and the online doctor and the four hour round trip up past the border.
Seven little pills. You take the other six the following day and then you bleed for a day or more.”

Eimear’s reading the leaflet, her face furrowed with worry. “I’ll stay with you tomorrow. It says someone
should.”

Niamh, 24
Emma stumbles into the bathroom and winces as she catches sight of herself in the mirror. She’s ghostly
white. At least there’s no one around to see her. Her housemates are all at that Student Union thing. She’d
told them she had a splitting headache after the “funeral in the UK” she’d allegedly been to. It was the same
lie she’d told her lecturers, better to keep these things simple. RIP Great-Auntie Flo.

She sits on the toilet and googles “marie stopes” again. It autocompletes as soon as she types “m” into the
search bar.

You’ve visited this site 21 times.

The nurse at the clinic had told her how much bleeding was too much bleeding. She’d said she understood.
She had, at the time. But now she’s alone and her stomach hurts like hell and she can’t remember exactly. If
you bleed through more than how many maxi pads? In what time frame? Was it two in an hour? One in two
hours?

She’d been alright on the plane but it got heavier on the bus. She’d gone straight to bed but when she got
up to get a hot water bottle she’d almost screamed. It was worse than when she got her first period. She
hopes to god it didn’t soak through the old towel she put under the sheet. At least she had managed to do
that much. She can’t afford to lose her deposit on this apartment.

Emma’s phone is shaking in her hand. This will just freak out her housemates. She wants to talk to her sister,
but it’s after 10 pm, so it’ll be after 9 am in Sydney; Shauna will be at work. She considers calling her parents
and immediately dismisses it. They can’t know.

She climbs back into bed with another towel.

Emma, 21
Cathy climbs the stairs, completely exhausted, letting her husband thank Áine for watching Dónal.
She isn’t able for how kind Áine’s going to be. Too many people know. They’ll have to be told.
“Incompatible with life”. Or maybe just “miscarriage”. And then they’ll be kind to her, and she won’t
be able to bear it. One soft word or empathetic glance and she bursts into tears these days.

She opens Dónal’s door softly, and he slowly comes into view as her eyes adjust to the dim light in
his room.

She’d felt torn between them; her sturdy, healthy toddler, probably driving Áine wild racing around
with his favourite truck and his Elsa doll, and his tiny, fragile sister dying inside her.

She had cried saying goodbye to him when they left for the airport yesterday, a hundred years ago.
She had cried more saying goodbye to his sister today. They had to leave her behind. She still
couldn’t believe it.

A box will arrive. FedEx. With the tiny handful of ashes. She doesn’t know what to do with them. The
kind nurse with the brown eyes promised she would say a Hail Mary at the cremation. Cathy wanted
to stay, to say goodbye properly, but she couldn’t bear to be away from Dónal any longer than
necessary.

Tom comes upstairs too and holds her. She wants a bath, but she can’t have one. Risk of infection,
they said. And she feels faint.

So she gets him to stand outside the shower, and she cries.

Cathy, 37
Statistics tell us that, between the first day of 1980 and the last day of 2016, at least 170,216 people from the
Republic of Ireland travelled to another country to access abortion services. During 2016, 3,265 people gave
Irish addresses at UK abortion services. Between 2010 and 2012, 1,023 people were sent abortion pills from
one supplier in the Netherlands.

These figures do not include Irish people who give a UK address at a UK abortion service, or Irish people who
access abortion services in countries other than the UK, or Irish people who sourced abortion pills from other
suppliers or in more roundabout ways. These numbers are therefore a minimum.

Statistics tell us that, on an average day, 9 Irish women will travel to the UK to access an abortion.

And at least one will take abortion pills at home.

If we take a statistically average group of ten women, 7 of them will be less than 9 weeks pregnant and all
of them will be less than 17 weeks pregnant.

Five of them will have been using birth control when they got pregnant.

Six of them will already have at least one child.

This is the daily reality of Irish abortion. Abortion is illegal in Ireland, due to the 8th Amendment of the Irish
Constitution, in all circumstances except to save the life of the pregnant person. On the 25th of May, 2018, a
referendum will be held on whether to repeal or retain the 8th Amendment. If Ireland votes YES to repeal
the 8th Amendment, these ten women will be able to access abortion services in their own country and
under the care of a doctor.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales

https://www.ifpa.ie/Hot-Topics/Abortion/Statistics

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-ireland.html

Emer Ellis-Neenan