Here’s a story that broke in Donegal earlier this week, as reported in The Irish Independent:
“A man has pleaded guilty to causing the unlawful termination of a pregnancy. The man, who cannot be named due to the nature of the charges, appeared at Letterkenny Circuit Court before Judge John Aylmer.
“The man, aged in his 20s, had previously entered a not guilty plea and a jury was empanelled on Tuesday with the trial expected to start on Wednesday morning.
“However, on Wednesday, the defence team led by Mr James McGowan SC and Sean McGee BL, instructed by McIntrye and O’Brien Solicitors, indicated the man could be rearraigned on two charges.
“The man was rearraigned in front of a jury of six women and six men and entered guilty pleas. The man is charged with unlawful ending of the life of a foetus, contrary to section 23 (2) of the health regulation of termination of pregnancy act 2018.
The report continues: “He is accused on February 14, 2020, at an address in County Donegal, he did prescribe, administer, supply or procure any drug, substance, instrument, apparatus or other thing knowing or intending it to be used or employed to end the life of a foetus or being reckless as to whether it was intended to be so used or employed, otherwise then in the accordance of the health regulations of terminations of pregnancy act 2018.
“The man also pleaded guilty to assaulting the woman, causing her harm.
“The charge is contrary to section 3 of Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997. The man spoke only to plead guilty to the charges. Charges of making threats to kill or seriously harm the woman and false imprisonment of the woman were marked to be taken into consideration.”
A victim impact statement will be sought, the court heard, as Judge Aylmer adjourned the case for sentencing to the next sitting of Letterkenny Circuit Court in February.
We have become so insulated from hearing any of the negative consequences of Ireland’s abortion law that stories like this one are almost buried. It certainly provoked no media storm in Montrose this week, or led to any soul-searching on Newstalk or in the Irish Times.
Where is the examination of the issues around this horrific case, especially in regard to the coercion of women, and the ease of obtaining abortion pills?
There is no desire in our media, nor from most politicians, to discuss the issue of abortion coercion, even though it is happening, and even though it is obvious that where domestic violence and control is present in a relationship, there might also be a danger of coerced abortion.
There was a separate case just two months ago, in September, before the courts which involved a man in his twenties who is alleged to have threatened to drag his pregnant partner to an “abortion clinic” and who was refused bail after a judge in Dublin found the woman was left in fear for herself and her unborn child.
That case, before Tallaght District Court, followed an alleged domestic incident. Again, The Irish Independent reports from the courts: “The woman, who is pregnant, said the accused had jumped on her car, thrown runners around her home, smashed a wardrobe and chandeliers and refused to return her house keys.
“She said she was “living in fear for me and my kids and my unborn child”. She also told the court the accused had threatened to drag her “by the hair of her head to the abortion clinic”.
The court heard that gardaí found a key to the woman’s home in the accused’s pocket during a search the day after the alleged incident.”
Again, while the case was reported as court news, it did not receive widespread attention or spark discussion on the airwaves regarding the use of abortion to deny women choices or to bully and terrorise them.
We all remember the anger from progressives on the rare instances when women were or are brought before the courts for illegally taking abortion pills. Arguments favouring abortion, even late-term procedures, are centred around boldily autonomy and choice. Yet when cases like the aforementioned crop up – when women are alleging that they have been forced into abortions they did not want – the activists have nothing to say.
Where are the pro-woman groups when it comes to highlighting the horrors of abortion coercion, and the lifelong effect that has on women? Why aren’t feminists speaking out?
In Britain, we heard very little about the case of Stuart Worby, a 40-year-old man who, in February of this year, had his sentence increased to 17 years. A court had heard that in 2022, after failing to convince the victim to have an abortion, Worby administered two drugs designed to induce miscarriages to the victim without her consent.
He had obtained abortion pills through an associate who rang a clinic, posing as a pregnant woman looking to abort her pregnancy. The first dose was dissolved into his victim’s drink, while the second dose was physically inserted into the victim.
The victim suffered immediately from the drugs and Worby refused to seek medical help, even asking his associate for more drugs as he thought they hadn’t worked. The following day the victim suffered a miscarriage and is now unable to have children.
“The only baby that I could have had was the one I lost,” the victim, who was not named for legal reasons, said in her victim impact statement.
In Ireland at present, it is clear to see that the media are disinterested in shocking cases where women are pressured into abortion. That may be curious to you, but it is hardly surprising, coming from a mainstream press which so heavily sided with the Repeal campaign in 2018, a campaign which continuously pushed a narrative to voters about giving women choice and freedom and liberation. In the cases above, abortion has resulted in misery, and not in relief or happiness for the women at the centre of those stories.
That should be acknowledged. We hear about “gaps in services” – such as in RTE Investigates – but not about a lack of safeguards, or a spiralling abortion rate: 55,000 babies have been aborted since the law came into force.
Our birthrate is on the floor, yet when asked if we should try and raise those birthrates, Chief Economist John McCarthy insists that pro-natalist policies have been shown to “have virtually no impact” in other countries. There is absolutely no will to help Irish people have children – kids they often want – but all the will in the world to help ramp up the abortion figures because 10,000 a year is apparently not enough.
The State-funded National Women’s Council wants to take a wrecking ball to the three-day wait which gives women pause to reflect (and was promised as a safeguard), as well as the 12-week gestational limit for abortion, which was again, at the time, promised as a safeguard to voters. The NWCI wants to expand access to telemedicine abortions, which is a whole other story in itself, given the threat that a lack of face-to-face consultation can pose to women. But where are these so-called stalwarts for women when it comes to coercion and abuse related to this abortion law?
When a law produces negative consequences, we ought to have a discussion of those outcomes, rather than burying our heads in the sand, as we continue to do. The only commentary you’ll hear from RTÉ and others on abortion these days is the view that we need more abortion expansion, or that pregnancy centres offering alternatives need to be shuttered.
Since Covid, despite objections from medical experts, Simon Harris and then Stephen Donnelly made it easier to obtain abortion pills without face-to-face appointments with medics. What impact is this having on abortion coercion? Is the Department of Health making any efforts to track or understand that?
The truth is that many women in this country are being made to feel they have no choice on abortion – because being ‘pro-choice’ usually actually means telling women they are on their own. But forcing or pressuuring women to take abortion pills is a hugely sinister development.
How many celebrity memoirs have we now which detail high-profile women having abortions because the father just didn’t want to be a dad? I recall Britney Spears’s memoir ‘The Woman in Me’, published in 2023, in which Spears revealed that she made the “agonizing” decision to abort her baby with Justin Timberlake, something that she would not have done if she had been alone. That’s just one celebrity story, but if you look at our abortion rate of 10,000 lives lost a year to abortion – how many of those cases involve similar experiences?
Our shiny, modern Ireland is leaving women to pick up the pieces, while telling them that they are empowered. Abortion coercion seems to be the price that liberals are happy for some women – other women – to pay for ensuring the ability to end the lives of unborn children. The rest of us should make it clear that we find that trade-off unacceptable.