A major abortion provider in Britain, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), has today launched a new helpline for women who have taken abortion pills after ordering them online from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland from groups such as Women Help Women or Women On Web.
While Ann Furedi, the head of BPAS, has used the launch to try and pressure the Irish Government to remove the laws in Ireland that protect mothers and their unborn babies, BPAS has also been forced to acknowledge that if required, the helpline can be used to call for an ambulance. This will come as no surprise to pro-life supporters who are only too well aware of the fact that despite the claims of abortion providers, there is nothing safe about ordering a pill that brings about an abortion.
Desperate to paint this latest intrusion into the Irish abortion debate as something intended to help women, those responsible have not explained why BPAS are not putting their resources into providing alternatives for abortion, a procedure which has nothing to do with healthcare but which ends the life of an unborn child and which very often leaves a woman suffering serious trauma.
The helpline is nothing but a further attempt by BPAS to ignore the unborn baby entirely, and normalize abortion, which is life-ending, not life-saving.
Those who take the time to listen to the testimonies of women who deeply regret their abortions would realise that it is the abortion procedure itself that causes grief and deep sadness over the loss of a child. The location of the abortion clinic is irrelevant, yet this is the sole interest of those who are trying to remove Ireland’s pro-life constitutional amendment and ensure that abortions take place in Ireland. This faulty reasoning ignores the experience of the members of Irish abortion recovery group Women Hurt, who courageously speak about the grief and distress that their abortions caused in their lives, regardless of where those abortions took place.
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It is also very telling that groups like the media in Ireland will provide a platform to BPAS when they want to talk about abortion pills, but there is no such willingness to address other serious issues regarding the same pills.
For example, counsellors in the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA), which is funded by tax-payers in Ireland and which is affiliated to International Planned Parenthood Federation, were found to be coaching women in Ireland on how to import illegal abortion pills and take them without medical supervision. Those at the head of the IFPA have made no efforts to reassure women in Ireland or to apologise to them for this serious and worrying revelation.
Given those circumstances, it is very difficult to take abortion providers like the BPAS seriously when they comment on women’s health in Ireland but are not prepared to call on the IFPA to explain why they allowed such a serious disregard for women’s health to go on in their clinics.
It’s time abortion providers were serious about the harm that abortion can cause. It ends the life of an unborn child, and can cause his or her mother to suffer from grief and trauma. These sad effects could be avoided if large and powerful groups that are currently working hard to remove Ireland’s pro-life laws were instead prepared to channel their time and resources into efforts that protect all human beings, born and unborn.
