Anthea McTeirnan: Dear Cousin, Please Don’t Come to Ireland

Published: Thursday, September 25, 2014

Dear Cousin,

So you’re planning to come to Ireland to celebrate a most significant birthday? I would love to see you here, in this country that has always meant so much to you. I would love to hug your impressive daughters. I would love you to come, but I’m asking you not to come. Not yet. It is no country for young women. Indeed for any woman.
According to Fáilte Ireland, in 2013 just over one-third (37 per cent) of those coming to Ireland to visit friends or relatives were born in Ireland and a further 21 per cent had other family ties to Ireland. These visitors left ¤4.5 billion behind them in Irish State coffers.

And how did the Irish State spend it?

Some of it paid for medical services which forced a young woman to carry a pregnancy she didn’t want. A pregnancy imposed by rape. A pregnancy that made the young woman, who had sought asylum in Ireland, feel suicidal.

Your tourist euros might have gone to pay for the medical facilities, drugs, surgical implements and staff required to cut this young woman open and remove a 26-week old foetus from her belly.

I am pretty sure there aren’t many visitors to these shores who would want that. They wouldn’t want that to happen to another girl or woman in Ireland.
The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 has finally been backed up by guidelines for medical practitioners who should use their “clinical judgment” to decide what is best for a woman whose pregnancy is making her suicidal. Their clinical options include “a medical or surgical termination or an early delivery by induction or Caesarean section”.

Anyone who thought Miss Y had fallen foul of an aberration in Ireland’s system of medical care can pack away that hope. The Irish State thinks it is acceptable to cut a foetus from a woman’s stressed, unwilling body.

When it comes to visitors to this country, for every euro spent on tourism here, 24.5 cent is generated in tax. It’s not all diddley-aye – some of this money will go on torturing more women.

Britain remains Ireland’s biggest source of overseas tourists, contributing 43 per cent of visits. Mainland Europe accounts for 35 per cent. Some 16 per cent of overseas tourists come from North America and 6 per cent come from other long-haul markets.

Women from Ireland remain at the mercy of the generosity and egalitarian, woman-centred medical services of our European neighbours. They should of course, let us continue to travel there; but they should hold off travelling here.

Next Saturday, thousands of people will march for choice – again.

We have marched for decades. We have marched to demand that the women of this nation be treated as equal citizens. We have marched to say that the women of Ireland should have the same rights over their bodies as the majority of women in the rest of the world. We have marched in sadness, anger and devastation as women in Ireland have been butchered and died.

We have not been silent, but no one has listened. Ever.

The present Government has said it will do nothing to change current the position of women’s reproductive rights.

United Nations Human Rights supremos think women in Ireland are considered “vessels”. It has a point. But we are not vessels. And tourists arriving on Irish shores don’t think so either.

Marching, cathartic though it is, has not changed anything. The time has come to hit the Irish Government where it hurts. Economic sanctions have a habit of making points and changing history. Ask the South Africans.

You are, dear Cousin, definitely not a vessel and nor are your daughters. When things change for women in Ireland, you will be able to exercise your right to travel here without worrying that tax you pay while you’re here will pay for the most vulnerable women in this State to be imprisoned until they are ripe for harvest.
Ireland is no place to spend your hard-earned cash. Go to a country where women have reproductive rights. You will be spoilt for choice.

Anthea McTeirnan is a member of the Repeal the Eighth Amendment Campaign.
The March for Choice takes place in Dublin on September 27th at 2pm.

The views contained within NWCI's blog do not necessarily represent the views of NWCI.