Talk:Abortion in the United Kingdom

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I did a few minor edits to this very infomative article. Would it be possible to clarify whether the Irish women travelling to GB for abortions are from Northern Ireland, the Republic or both? ~jimfbleak

There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that a large proportion of those 'Irish' women in Britain for abortions aren't Irish at all. Doctors in one Liverpool clinic in 1997 observed that less than 25% of those 'Irish' women actually had Irish accents; most had Liverpool accents, some Scottish, etc. There are still many British women who are unwilling to give a lot of personal details when checking into a hospital for a termination. They suspected that in saying 'I'm Irish' the women in question presumed that that would mean the hospital would decide that it would be tactful not to ask for any detailed info (home addresses, doctor contact numbers etc), on the basis that Irish women travelling for an abortion that was illegal in their own country would be unwilling to give the details and would be embarrassed to be asked. So the claims of Irishness by vast numbers of people seeking abortions are regarded by all but hardcore pro-abortion campaigners are deeply dodgy.

In addition, a travel survey in 1999 found that far less women of childbearing age travelled to specific locations in the UK than the supposed number of people showing up in those clinics for abortions and claiming Irishness. The survey on the demography of travel by age and gender suggested a serious discrepancy in the numbers. As many of these women were according to the survey not flying over with public airlines, and not travelling by boat from Dublin, Dun Laoghaire, Hollyhead or any port in Northern Ireland, the mystery was, how exactly were these 'Irish women' getting to the UK? Unless there is some secret unheard of secret boat or plane service, they were hiring private planes to fly them over or they are travelling to Europe and then to the UK, or they are swimming the Irish Sea, the numbers simply do not tally.

In one week in June 1999, a review of the number of women of 15-50 travelling to airports, sea ports and other locations within a fifty mile radius of a particular British city suggested that 144% of Irish women who travelled to that geographic area had abortions!!! Details of the exact numbers, or even a reasonable guess of the numbers of Irish women having British abortions, don't exist but put together, information from the hospitals, their data, the observations of staff and the result of the demographic survey of travel all suggest the speculated numbers are pie in the sky and privately off the record many leading abortion campaigners in Ireland admit that. FearÉIREANN 01:42 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I just had to point out that the above is complete and utter nonsense. From wiki "Estimates to the number of Irish women seeking abortions in Britain vary, in the 1990s it is alleged that between 1,500 and 10,000 women who stated in hospital records that they were 'Irish' travel annually. The official figure is 45,000 since 1967."

According to the UK Office of National Statistics, 20.4 million people visited Britain in 2006. I also found the following statistics- "Foreign visitors to the UK: American - 13%, French - 12%, German - 11%, Irish - 9.5%, Dutch - 6%". So, almost 2 million Irish people came to the UK in 2006. Admittedly some were probably in transit through UK airports, but I really don't believe that there were so few women of child-bearing age in Britain that 10,000 of them couldn't have been here for abortions. If only 10% of Irish visitors were women of child-bearing age, there would have been 200,000 of them in the UK last year. Maybe Ireland has some strange shortage of child-bearing women, or only men visited the UK. Seanjw 16:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vera Drake

Would a link to the 2004 film, Vera Drake, about a back-street abortionist, be a helpful illustration of the situation in England before the '67 Act? === Vernon White (talk) 08:33, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

If you can find a reliable source to suggest that Vera Drake is an accurate portrayal of the situation in the U.K. before the Abortion Act 1967, then, yes. Otherwise I'd suggest adding it to a "Trivia", "Popular culture," or "Arts and literature" section. -Severa (!!!) 16:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Don't really like "Trivia" sections added to heavy topics e.g Myra Hindley. Do you think there were any reliable contemporary social science studies of back-street abortionists. Maybe some of the actors have talked about the research they did on the characters and background. Is there any other "Popular Culture" source that might be mentioned in such a section? === Vernon White (talk) 19:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

(Undent) Understandable. It's just that, in a number of past discussions at Talk:Abortion, concerns have been raised over information regarding the practice of abortion before legalization (particularly in the U.S.). So as a preventative measure against similar objections being raised here it might be a good idea to add a source if you're going to introduce a reference to the film in the context of an example of the practice of abortion in the U.K. prior to 1967. Here's some stuff I found on Google about Vera Drake:

"Before 1967, abortion was a criminal offense in Britain, only permitted under very strict criteria. It was punishable by jail sentences of up to four years. But abortion remained an important form of contraception, particularly among working-class people whose access to other kinds of birth control was limited. Until the passing of the Abortion Act, it was estimated that there were 100,000 illegal abortions each year, often performed by working-class women like Vera Drake. We should not judge historical dramas only for historical correctness, but Vera Drake is an accurate reflection of the practice of working-class abortion and the way abortion law worked in the pre-1967 era."

I realize that "Popular culture" and "Trivia" are not the best examples of potential titles, but I've seen a "Trivia" section in at least one abortion-related article before (David Gunn (doctor)), and also introduced a "...in popular culture" section to Abortion-related violence. I gather it's somewhat customary to round up all the film, documentary, literature, music, etc. references that might not fit elsewhere in an article into a collective section (for example, see the "Media" section at World War II). As for other candidates for inclusion in such a "Media" section in this article, I'm Canadian, so I'm not as informed as editors in the U.K. might be. However, I do recall reading that Channel 4 aired a documentary called My Foetus (see the BBC News article, "Review: Abortion documentary is hard-hitting"). -Severa (!!!) 10:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

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