"How to get rid of a pregnancy"

Having seen people tweeting about the weird and wonderful ways readers reach their blogs, we decided to delve into our own statistics to see what people have been typing into Google to end up at this blog. 

Although of course plenty reached the EFC blog through links on other sites, or searches like 'abortion education in schools', one of the most common searches was the phrase 'how to get rid of a pregnancy'. Other popular searches included variations on 'pills to get rid of pregnancy'. Further investigation showed that quite a few people reached the EFC blog through a link on Ask.com which lead to this Mythbusting Monday post about medical abortion, explaining why the phrase 'abortion pill' can be misleading (Early Medical Abortion is actually a process involving two lots of medication, and two to three visits to a clinic, rather than just 'taking a pill').

It was sobering to realise that many people visiting this blog are not just looking for general information related to work or study but are likely themselves facing an unwanted pregnancy and unable to access the medical support they need to have an abortion. Sobering, but not all that surprising when you know that a decent proportion of visitors to this blog are from the USA and Ireland.

As you may know, although abortion is legal in the United States, access is severely restricted in some areas, meaning that those seeking abortion (especially poorer women) may look for 'cheaper' methods of ending a pregnancy, such as buying medication online. This graphic shows the varying levels of abortion access in the U.S - with mandatory waiting periods or insurance restrictions being enforced in many States, access to safe, legal abortion can be difficult.

Ireland, in turn, has one of the world's most restrictive abortion laws. Abortion is only available to save a pregnant person's life. Last year, almost 4000 women travelled from Ireland to England and Wales to have an abortion. Again, these women will have needed the financial means to pay for the procedure itself as well as transport and associated costs. Although the Abortion Support Network has been set up to help these women pay for the procedure, it can't support everyone. A recent article in Vice argued that more and more Irish women are turning to the internet to purchase abortion medication to administer themselves. The article points out that women taking this route are not recorded in the official statistics, although with hundreds of packages of such medication being seized every year, the number is clearly significant. 

Of course, ordering and using this medication is illegal in Ireland. But it seems that some are desperate enough to try to end a pregnancy even via methods which could put them in prison. And this is not just true of women in Ireland, or the U.S, but anywhere where abortion is illegal or restricted. And as the Guttmacher Institute makes clear, this method can be safer than traditional 'backstreet abortions' performed in unsanitary conditions: "In settings where abortion is illegal or highly restricted, it (abortion medication) has provided many women for the first time with a safe and discreet means for early termination of unwanted pregnancy." Safe Abortion Hotlines in places such as Chile, Poland and Kenya show that  where abortion is illegal or very severely restricted, there will still be women who find ways to end their pregnancies.

Unfortunately we were not surprised to see that some of these women had found their way to our site through searches for information on unwanted pregnancies which they cannot end in registered medical establishments, either due to legal, practical or economic constraints.

A very sinister hijacking of Savita Halappanavar's death

A guest blog from the unstoppable Farzana: dedicated to the memory of Savita Halappanavar

“Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hands with a grip that kills it” Rabindranath Tagore, (1861 – 1941)

When I read Praveen’s (Savita’s widower) account of the agony his wife was in and the reaction of the consultant when Savita asked for the pregnancy to be induced (as the fetus was unviable) I was angry and humiliated for the Halappanavars who were told “This is a Catholic country.”  A few tweeters noted the inherent racism within that response, @sunny_hundal for one, @SamAmbreen for two - and a whole host of others. However, when this was pointed out during the night and the next day, a very typical response came from certain people who refused to acknowledge that that statement could be perceived as being racist. We were accused of being “over-sensitive”, “reading too much into it” etc...

What I would say to those people is this: imagine you were Savita and Praveen. Savita was in agony by the time her cervix had dilated and both she and her husband were undoubtedly traumatised and upset that they were to lose their first child, thousands of miles away from home, away from the comfort of the familiar. Now imagine, as foreign, non-Irish, non-Catholic people that the medical intervention you have requested in good faith is effectively rejected and done so in a sneering condescending manner. Imagine if your daily lived reality is one of “being the other”.

If you haven’t experienced racism in its obnoxious and subtle forms then one could see how you might not relate to how those of us similar to the Halappanavars would legitimately react. Being generous, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Being miserly; I would say this: if you do not know what it is like to be of non-white skin colour, if you do not know what it is like to be judged for worshipping God in a different form, if you don’t have the same ethno-linguistic or cultural norms or values as the majority, if you are made to feel as if your non-white skin colour, your different form of worshipping God, your different ethno-linguistic-cultural norms are INFERIOR; then you do not know what it was like for Savita and Praveen at that time. You get me bredrens?

Predictably, a small but highly vocal racist group of anti-choice odds and sods have attempted to hijack the death of Savita and gone to town with some very strange views: views which fetishise the fetus but hate the brown mother.

One of the earliest tweets I spotted stated this: “The baby Savita (rip) lost was female. Many Indian people abort female babies. 2 facts”. In fact, according to her brother she had ‘always wanted to have a girl.’

My head sort of exploded about this time. I had a sinking feeling that the most uninformed anti-choicers would use the ethnicity of Savita as a tool in their disastrous counter campaign against a very angry and grief-stricken pro-choice movement.

Claims about Indians and sex-selective abortions are a cheap way to attack Savita’s Indian heritage, MY heritage, as one which is violently disproportionate in favour of men. However, if you consider that India (1966 & 1980), Sri Lanka (1960* the first female head of a modern post-colonial state), Pakistan (1988 and 1993), and Bangladesh - the “Battling Begums”  (1991, 2001, 1996, 2009) all have had female heads of state far earlier than any western country did (including the UK with Thatcher in 1979 and Mary Robinson in Ireland in 1990), you have to wonder – for countries which are portrayed as being so patriarchal and male dominated – we didn’t too badly did we bredrens? The most disturbing commentary on Savita’s death however has come from a well known active hardline anti-choice racist/White Nationalist. a link to his view that ‘Indian people are a bit slow and backward' is here.

First of all his views hardly make any logical sense. To claim that Indians are “slow and backward” when India is 10th largest economy in the world, 3rd for purchasing power, exports worth $299.4 billion. He then goes on to argue if Indians don’t like the way things are done in Ireland, then they “should go back to their smelly overpopulated country.” Overpopulated? Hang on – in the same diatribe, he argues that there is “no justification to allow the murdering of unborn babies.” I would also have to say, bredren, plenty of Irish people leave Ireland too to look for jobs abroad...and to get away from racist bumbaholes like you.

Another tweeter – a silly little boy who clearly doesn’t get out much, doesn’t read a quality newspaper or listen to the news – claimed that:  “That Muslim girl died, she was refused an abortion, am not racist but I f-ing hate smelly rag heads.” After I had picked myself up off the floor laughing hard at his “That Muslim girl,” (Savita was HINDU), I again felt the unease that racists, stupids and anti-choicers make for an explosive amount of stupidly uninformed bigoted views. That Savita was Indian, means that her ethnicity WILL be a factor in their frothy mouthed bigotry. I actually tweeted back “you do realise the woman who you implied as being a smelly rag head was in fact Hindu and not Muslim? PS I'm a smelly rag head.” I await his response, if any.

Savita’s death was horrible enough. Praveen, her husband, will arrive back in Ireland to fight for justice for his wife. A fitting legacy to Savita’s memory would be if Ireland would just reconsider their current legislation and make the necessary changes to ensure that no woman: whether white, brown, Catholic or non-Catholic is ever told “This is a Catholic country” as justification to deny a life- saving medical intervention.

Pro-choice is more pro-life than the anti-choicers would have you believe. Reclaim the term, we OWN it.

Updated: For London based people, there will be a protest outside the Irish embassy on Saturday 17th November 4pm onwards, for further details: http://www.abortionrights.org.uk/