Director of UK-based support charity tells of abuse and threats over her work helping to fund terminations for Irish women

As part of a special series on The Pat Kenny Show, UK-based Mara Clarke explains why she believes it’s morally right to help women access safe, legal abortions in clinics across England

“My mum, her cousin, my granny – they’ve gone for 30 or 40 years and never told anyone,” Anna says. “If I’d known about my mum’s experience, maybe I could have told her, and maybe it wouldn’t have been such an ordeal. To have the moral support would have been great. But none of us…

Clarke is similarly adamant that the Abortion Support Network is not a campaigning organization, just a service provider. “We’re the Band-Aid,” she said. “Ireland needs to find the cure.”

If the campaign is a success, it would mean that women in the North would be able to have an abortion in Dublin – a timely, cost effective and less traumatic option of flying to England and staying in a hotel or buying illegal tablets from the internet and jeopardising their own health.

I had an abortion. That is one of many facts about me. Here, have some more: I have hazel eyes, I am an avid reader, I have a son and a daughter, I hate salt and vinegar crisps. None of those facts should define for you who I am as a person. None of those…

“We’ve been very fortunate, we haven’t had to turn people away due to lack of funding since 2012. But there are people we are not able to help – they can’t get visas in time, they can’t escape their abusive partners or they can’t find somebody to watch their kids.”

A United Nations committee of 18 independent experts has expressed concern about “highly restrictive” abortion laws in a report on Northern Ireland.