Women want to be arrested for breaking Northern Ireland’s abortion laws

Three women in Northern Ireland handed themselves in to police Monday evening, requesting to be arrested out of protest after obtaining abortion pills banned under the country’s laws.

Dozens of protesters reportedly cheered outside of a police station in Londonderry as the three women presented themselves to authorities and read a statement, according to the Derry Journal.

A legal representative accompanied Diana King, 71, Kitty O’Kane, 69, and Colette Devlin, 68, to the station, where they were questioned for three hours before their release, the BBC said.

Unlike the rest of the United Kingdom, abortion remains illegal in Northern Ireland, save for rare health exceptions. Women there wanting to abort a pregnancy legally must travel to elsewhere in the UK for the procedure, a costly trip that can tally as much as $3,000 in procedure and travel costs.

The 1967 abortion act that established legal abortion elsewhere in the UK never applied to Northern Ireland, as the BBC noted.

Those Northern Irish women unable to afford to travel for the procedure may turn to abortion pills, breaking the law in the process.

“We do now have one law for the rich and one law for the poor,” King said in the statement outside the station, according to the Journal.

She added: “I don’t want to believe our politicians will let this continue, but I fear they will, so it is up to us to keep campaigning.”

More than 200 pro-abortion advocates faced arrest last year after signing an open letter declaring they had obtained abortion pills either for themselves or others, according to the Guardian.

No move to arrest them took place.

King, O’Keane and Delvin stepped forward for the arrests because they don’t have jobs that a criminal record might adversely affect, the Guardian said. King said she expected to learn whether they would be prosecuted—and possibly jailed—at a later date.

Last month, a 21-year-old woman in Northern Ireland plead guilty after buying abortion drugs online, receiving a three-month prison sentence.

She was unable to raise money to travel to England for an abortion, the BBC reported, and a male fetus was later found in a trash can in a house she shared with two roommates.

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