STATEMENT FROM MERJ- MIGRANTS AND ETHNIC MINORITIES FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE ON IRELAND’S ABORTION LEGISLATION
More than a year after the referendum, MERJ is writing a statement to address the reality of abortion for migrants. We are starting to receive information on issues migrants face in accessing abortions and we think it is important to bring attention to them: migrants’ issues were in fact brushed aside during the campaign and during conversations about the legislation.
A year after the 8th amendment was repealed, people still have to travel for abortions. Some from rural to urban areas within Ireland, but some are still having to go abroad. The reasons for this vary from surpassing the 12-week limit to refusal of hospitals to provide an abortion in cases of fatal foetal anomaly (FFA). The heavily regulated abortion access as it is now, with the waiting periods and conscientious objection pushes many women dangerously close to the cut-off period, having to go get an abortion in countries with different regulations, such as the Netherlands. But this presents additional barriers for migrant women, trans and non-binary people who do not have the same freedom of movement as their Irish counterparts. In order to travel outside of Ireland, many migrants must apply for visas which can take too long and can possibly be denied. Undocumented migrants find themselves trapped, not being able to access medical services in Ireland and not being able to apply for documentation to go abroad. Thus migrant women get caught in bureaucracy, risk the torture and trauma of carrying to date an unwanted pregnancy or a pregnancy where the foetus will not survive and are being asked for extortionate amounts of money to access abortions.
Although abortion is now legal in Ireland, asylum seekers still struggle to access the service. Factors like language barriers, including the MyOptions service only being in English and Irish, lack of assistance from the Direct Provision/Emergency Accommodation system and lack of information leave them scared and vulnerable, not knowing where to turn to when in a crisis pregnancy. This leaves people open to the misinformation and manipulation of rogue crisis pregnancy agencies. Abortion stigma and lack of privacy in Direct Provision centres exacerbate the problem. We already know about a case where an asylum seeker was too scared to disclose her pregnancy and by the time she did disclose it she was too far along in her pregnancy to get an abortion. She became trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare trying to access abortion in the Netherlands. The lack of availability of second trimester abortions, and the lack of willingness of countries to perform abortion for non-residents, led to her continuing the pregnancy despite the mental risks and torture it imposed.
Undocumented people cannot travel outside of Ireland. The border regime makes it increasingly easy for people to become undocumented and impossible for undocumented migrants to travel abroad. We were contacted by a woman who had been trying to get an appointment to renew her visa, but it was impossible for her to do so. While she was waiting for her visa appointment she was scared to go to a GP because of her legal status and passed the 12-week cut-off point for an abortion. Another migrant from outside of Europe risked deportation and took a ferry to England because she couldn’t access an abortion in Ireland. Others turned to getting the pill illegally, risking jail time and deportation, because they were being charged extortionate prices for the doctors’ appointment and the abortion itself despite the fact they they should have had access to it cost-free under Irish provision.
In MERJ we get contacted by migrants with crisis pregnancies needing to access abortion multiple times a month. The legislation is failing them. Between waiting periods, conscientious objection and institutionalised racism they struggle to access appointments. We know of other cases we will not disclose for reasons of security where migrants who were diagnosed with a FFA were refused an abortion because the doctors claim it was possible that the foetus might be able to briefly survive outside the womb. Even if the time they would be alive was 20 minutes or an hour, the case was dismissed and the woman in question could not get an abortion, getting trapped in a bureacratic nightmare, eventually managing to secure a visa after an initial refusal and access an abortion abroad.
Migrant women, trans and non-binary people are at the intersection between financial and legal precariousness. On top of the limitation that waiting periods, conscientious objection and costs imposes on migrants, the lack of guidance from the state and medical professionals makes the health system in Ireland difficult to navigate for migrants. Many go through unnecessary distress trying to get the documentation to travel or they will be taken advantage of by unhelpful medical professionals.
One of the major impediments to abortion care in Ireland, especially in rural areas, is conscientious objection. Doctors are under no legal obligation to provide a reason for their objection, nor a referral to another doctor. Despite how widespread this practice is, there has been little discussion of conscientious objection or challenging of it from the pro-choice side.
We warned about these problems and unfortunately we are seeing them being played out. Let’s not make the same mistakes and continue to ignore migrant women, trans and non-binary people. The specific barriers that borders, racism and financial precariousness impose on those who make up to 20% of the population of Ireland cannot be ignored. We cannot talk about reproductive justice, we cannot talk about intersectional feminism, we cannot talk about free, safe, legal and local until we ensure that the voices of all those affected by lack of abortion access are heard and their needs are met.
