Two Northern Irish women who reported their flatmate to the police after she self-administered illegal abortion pills have spoken out about their ordeal after being hounded by pro-abortion campaigners and lambasted by the liberal press.
Their 21 year old housemate, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty at Belfast Crown Court this week to procuring her own abortion by using a poison and of supplying a poison with intent to procure a miscarriage two years previously.
Her only crime came to light thanks to her two housemates who alerted police to what she had done. Online, pro-abortionists have accused them of “acting out of spite” and being “bitchy”.
Despite walking free from court having been handed a three month sentence suspended for two years, pro-abortionists have reacted with outrage that the woman was convicted, accusing the government of discriminating against Northern Irish women as abortion law is tighter there than elsewhere in the UK.
The girl herself has said she felt “victimised by the system,” while a columnist for the Independent said her “desperate” attempts to save for a flight to England to have an abortion there constituted “a heart-breaking nightmare.”
But an interview given by her former housemates to the Belfast Telegraph has revealed hidden victims – the flatmates themselves, who have not only been hounded by pro-abortionists since the case came to court, but were also deeply affected by witnessing the abortion.
One of the women was so shaken by the abortion that she had to have counselling. “She called the baby ‘the pest’ and kept saying she just wanted rid of it. She said: ‘I don’t want this inside me.’ I offered a number of times to become legal guardian to the child. I myself had just had a miscarriage,” the 38 year old said.
“I really tried to help her. I talked through a number of options but she just didn’t want to know.
“She said she was going to order these pills online. … The first I knew that she had taken them was on the Friday night when she said she was getting awful cramps.
“The next day I was downstairs on my own and she phoned me from her bedroom and asked me if I could bring her a pair of scissors. I wasn’t thinking straight. I went upstairs with them.
She was lying in bed and I asked what she wanted them for. She said ‘this is hanging out of me on a piece of string’. A couple of hours later she came down carrying a plastic bag.
“A bit later I was going to put rubbish out in the bin and there was the bag. When my other housemate came home on the Sunday we went and looked in the bag in the bin. There was the baby on a towel.
“I didn’t expect the baby to be so fully formed. The court was told she was 10 to 12 weeks pregnant when she obtained the tablets, but he seemed older. He had fingers, little toes. Even now I just have a picture in my mind of it. Its wee foot was perfect.
“Even now I feel sick. It has done so much damage to me mentally.
“It is something I can’t get out of my head. On bin collection day I couldn’t bring myself to put the bin out for collection. I didn’t want to throw a baby away. I didn’t know what to do.”
Her 22 year old flatmate said: “I tried to be nice to her. But really there was no sign of remorse at all, her attitude really got to me.
“I asked her why she wouldn’t give the baby a proper burial and she said ‘do you want me to put it in a bag and throw it up the street?’ I was so angry at her attitude. I eventually cracked up and told a friend. I was a frantic mess. He was shocked and told me I had to contact the police.”
Both said pro-abortionists had been abusing them online since the court hearing.
“It is just insane the way we are being portrayed as being the bad ones in this. The abuse we are getting is just awful,” the younger housemate said. “People are accusing us of having no compassion for not getting her help. But she begged and pleaded with us not to tell anyone.
“This isn’t a debate about the rights and wrongs of abortion. The way this was done was wrong. The baby had hands, feet, all its facial features, its little nose. I can’t stop thinking that it might have been alive when it was born. It is awful.”