Chai Brady
Noel Patrún and Caren Ní Hallacháin stand in front of Save the 8th's new billboard depicting Noel. Photos Chai Brady Two medical professionals have moved to the forefront of a new pro-life campaign that aims to highlight what could happen if the Eighth Amendment is removed from the constitution for both the general public and those working in the health sector.
Pro-life group Save the 8th launched their video campaign this week which tells the story of agency nurse Caren Ní Hallachán, who worked in Australia, and psychiatric nurse and general scrub nurse Noel Patrún who worked for the NHS in the UK.
With the upcoming abortion referendum expected to be held in May, the #MyAbortionStory campaign aspires to give a platform to those who have experienced the realities of legalised abortion.
Speaking at the launch, Caren described working in a hospital in Sydney in the early ‘90s when a woman arrived for an abortion who was 22 weeks pregnant – she was told her unborn child had a chromosomal abnormality.
She spoke of walking into the sluice room and seeing the baby still alive in a kidney dish, saying: “I was a young nurse and didn’t know what to do. Because this was an abortion I wasn’t allowed to intervene, I couldn’t get help for the baby…”
“To see the baby trying to breathe, and nobody helping him, was so distressing and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Abandoned
After Caren left she felt she had “abandoned” the baby, and that there was “no dignity in abortion”.
“There is a heartbreaking reality to repealing the Eighth Amendment and legalising abortion that is largely being ignored. I never want any nurse to see the heartbreaking reality that I saw,” she added. A video of her story will be released on social media and billboards have been printed.
In Australia, figures released by Health Minister Cameron Dick revealed that between 2005 and 2014, 204 abortions culminated in live birth outcomes.
Niamh Uí Bhriain of the Save the Eighth campaign said that there were many more stories similar to Caren’s in countries where abortion has been legalised.
She said: “Caren’s story is not an isolated one, and we have already received six other testimonies in the past week from nurses who witnessed similar events in Britain and elsewhere.”
Noel Patrún initially worked as a psychiatric nurse for over a decade in the UK, and said that he was initially indifferent to where he stood on abortion.
After changing jobs to work as an Operating Department Practitioner in a major general hospital, he was placed in the gynaecology and obstetrics theatre department where he assisted in carrying out abortions. He handled STOPs: suction termination of pregnancies.
“My two daughters were born and I began to think twice about what I was involved in. I felt there was a huge contradiction in that the hospital was helping women to get pregnant on one floor and carrying out abortions on the next,” he said.
He told reporters that he told his Charge Nurse that he didn’t want to be involved in terminations anymore and said he was “shocked” that his right to “opt-out of abortions was not protected” and he continued to be rostered to assist with abortions.
“I then became the target of persistent bullying, and experienced verbal attacks and psychological harassment which became more and more difficult to endure.
“In the end, I was forced to leave my job.”
Bullying
Noel said he was subject to six months of bullying, which included his clothes and locker being vandalised, and on one evening after finishing an afternoon shift in winter, he had gone home to find in his top left-hand pocket “the remains of an aborted baby”.
He said that was the straw that broke the camel’s back in his decision to leave the job.
Save the 8th highlighted figures from the British Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (2005) which noted 66 babies survived abortion and died in the neonatal period.
For 16 babies born at 22 weeks gestation, death occurred between one and 270 minutes after birth. For 50 others that were born prior to 22 weeks gestation, death occurred between zero and 615 minutes after birth.
NI abortion laws are ‘violence against women’ says UN
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) said that Northern Ireland is violating women’s rights by restricting their access to abortion. Although Northern Ireland is a region of the UK, the country allows abortion only when the mother’s life or health is endangered by her pregnancy, making them quite rare.
As a result of this law, CEDAW spokeswoman Ruth Halperin-Kaddari stated: “Denial of abortion and criminalisation of abortion amounts to discrimination against women because it is a denial of a service that only women need. And it puts women in horrific situations.”
She claimed that Northern Ireland’s pro-life stance “constitutes violence against women that may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.
The report advocated for the government to change its abortion laws, such as its decriminalisation, and urged that abortion be made legal in cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal impairment.
Government recruitment procedures undermined
The Pro Life Campaign (PLC) has called for a full and immediate audit of the recruitment processes employed in relation to members of the Citizens’ Assembly, following revelations that a number of members were not recruited in accordance with correct procedures.
After a randomised check of the agreed recruitment methodology, it emerged that seven members were not recruited randomly but had personal connections with the recruiter. Although the issue was raised with RED C Research and Marketing, the firm responsible for the recruitment of members, which then conducted an “extensive audit”, PLC has called for a “full and immediate audit” in light of the revelations.
“These developments are deeply worrying and warrant full and immediate investigation. Given the importance of the topics that the Assembly was charged with deliberating on, there can be no delay in bringing this about,” said PLC spokesperson Dr Ruth Cullen.