Anti-Abortion Group to Harass Women Traveling for Treatment at Airports

As if this trauma wasn't bad enough, anti-abortion activists have found a new way to compound the emotional turmoil experienced by these vulnerable women and girls: by haranguing them at airports as they wait to board their flights.

The Independent reports that anti-abortion campaigners from the Irish Institute for Bio-ethical Reform (ICBR) are planning protests at Dublin and Cork airports, the two major departure points for women traveling to the UK for reproductive care. The group plans to use gruesome images and fear-mongering tactics to intimidate women and girls.

According to the ICBR newsletter promoting the so-called Airport Education Project, they will stand "at the airport with our airport-themed images as part of our consumer protection initiative. We will show their 'consumer client' [women accessing abortion care] what they would never dare to— abortion reality."

In reality, this means is graphic signs that claim to show fetuses being brutally murdered in the womb. (These signs, as with much of the pseudo-science put out by the anti-abortion lobby, are scientifically inaccurate and emotionally manipulative.) In order to get on their flight, women traveling to the UK for care would have to run this gauntlet of anti-abortion protestors.

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ICBR is also raising funds for signs measuring 15 feet by five feet. These will bear slogans such as "DEPARTING ABORTION PASSENGERS, STOP. We are here to help you and your baby," and "DEPARTING ABORTION PASSENGERS, STOP. We will reimburse your non-refundable tickets."

It's a gruesome new frontier for the anti-abortion movement, which has shown no qualms about the emotional cruelty they inflict on those accessing the abortion care the United Nations has officially recognized as a human right.

"So people who are against abortion are going to set up graphic images of surgical procedures in the view of the thousands of people using the Dublin airport each day in an attempt to stop or shame the 12 women a day forced to leave their country and pay £400 to £2,000 for an abortion in England," comments Mara Clarke of the Abortion Support Network, a charity helping Irish and Northern Irish women travelling to the UK for abortion care. "I'm glad the airports aren't going to put up with such nonsense."

Both Dublin and Cork airport told Broadly that such protests are banned on the premises, though they declined to confirm whether campaigners would be forcibly removed if the protest goes ahead.

"Under statutory airport by-laws, the distribution of leaflets, pamphlets or other documentation to staff, passengers or visitors, or leaving such items on vehicles or in any areas at or within the airport and conducting or taking part in public meetings, demonstrations or processions are specifically prohibited unless permission has been given by the airport authority," the two airports said in a statement. "We do not give permission for protests of any type."

But the ICBR claim that they will continue with their planned protests regardless of objections. Spokesperson Jean-Simonis Engela told the Independent, "We continue to pledge to scrupulously abide by all lawful rules and regulations governing public order on the public walkways of Dublin and Cork in which we intend on holding our education displays i.e. as close to the airport buildings as we may lawfully stand."

Meanwhile, for the thousands of Irish women deprived of their human right to abortion, today marks a new low in the fight for basic reproductive rights.