‘It’s punk to try and make the world a better place. It’s punk to reject what people think you should be doing with your life’.

Just after Christmas, a woman needed a last-minute place to stay. I picked her up from the station, tried to get her to eat some dinner, provided her with a warm room for the night and then took her to the clinic in the morning. This experience brought home to me the barbarity of outsourcing…

With Ireland soon holding a referendum on abortion; Sputnik spoke with Mara Clarke; Founder of the Abortion Support Network to get her views on the issue.

The move has been welcomed, however, by the Abortion Support Network, an organisation that offers financial assistance and accommodation to women travelling from Northern Ireland for an abortion.

“There are so many contacting us because more people know about us. Is the need growing? I don’t know. We heard from 801 [last year] but we only fund about 25 per cent of those who contact us. But we have not turned someone away due to lack of money on our part in five…

“We’re continuing to answer calls, provide information and fund abortions for people in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man who need them. “We’re going to wait and see what happens but – whatever the outcome – we are going to continue to fund abortions for those who need them.”

Updated April 2020 People resident in Northern Ireland can (finally, finally, finally) now access free abortion in Northern Ireland through a service currently run (as of 24 April 2020) by Informing Choices NI (formerly the Northern Irish Family Planning Association). Informing Choices can signpost people to providers of early medical abortion pills within Northern Ireland up…

Mara Clarke from the Abortion Support Network, said that the move by Scotland was a welcome one, but only a “sticking plaster” in the absence of “free, safe and legal abortions in Northern Ireland”. She said: “Any place that women from Northern Ireland can travel for an abortion is fantastic, but just like our organisation…

Looking back on it now I’m much less tolerant of those who are anti-choice. Every time I hear those views expressed I feel like they’re saying it directly to me, so I feel more justified in saying ‘no, you don’t get to say that’.

The British government has already said that Northern Irish women will no longer have to pay for the procedure after travelling and has now offered to pay the travel costs for women earning less than £15,300 (€16,800) a year.