WOMEN IN Ireland – including immigrant women – who have travelled to the UK for an abortion are being invited to relate their experiences in confidence to Human Rights Watch.
Liesl Gerntholtz, director of the women’s rights division at the human rights research body, was in Dublin last week to gather information and meet with agencies and policy makers. The information will be used in a research project to inform EU policy makers in human rights and to advocate for a change in the law in Ireland.
“We want to make contact with more immigrant women who have had to travel to the UK for an abortion,” said Gerntholtz. “We have had some second hand accounts of how migrant women face these situations, but we really need to hear from more individuals.”
The Irish Family Planning Association states that women “who are refugees, asylum seekers or unregistered migrants face particularly difficult challenges” in obtaining abortions, “resulting in increased delay, expense, unnecessary hardship and stigma.”
It adds: “Refugees or asylum seekers who wish to travel to the UK for abortion services must apply to the Department of Justice for a visa to re-enter the country. This process is time-consuming and burdensome.”
Gerntholtz said that many women faced with having to travel to the UK for an abortion cite financial restrictions as the main cause of stress.
“So if a woman is living on the allowance of €19.10 she would find it very hard. Women have to beg, scrimp or borrow for the costs associated with this travel.”
But according to Gerntholtz, they find a way somehow, and Human Rights Watch needs to know how they managed the process.
Post-abortion care and counselling is also being denied to women who have to travel to the UK for abortions from Ireland. “In booming and progressive Ireland, this is a very medieval approach to women’s decision making rights over their own reproductive selves,” said Gerntholtz.
Rosanna Flynn, an abortion rights activist, noted that the hardships endured by immigrant women in trying to travel for an abortion are inexplicable.
“Many women asylum seekers are so vulnerable that it would be impossible for them to have sufficient local knowledge to know what to do, where to go or how to get information which is not always easily available,” she said.
According to Flynn, the fear of being refused re-entry to Ireland while in the middle of an asylum hearing has prompted at least one African woman to obtain an illegal abortion here in Ireland.
If you have any relevant experience to relate to Human Rights Watch, contact Liesl Gerntholtz at +44 207 713 2796 (calls will be returned for free) or send an e-mail to liesl.gerntholtz@hrw.org.
