Like a Ship in the Night: Anonymous Crossings

illustrate interviews with women who have travelled to England in order to obtain abortions.  A conservative estimate of 9,000 Irish women make this journey every year due to the ban on abortion in both the Republic and in Northern Ireland.  Says one woman: "I was 21, from rural Ireland, and I had become pregnant.  I didn't know what to do.  You can't have contraception and you can't have a child out of marriage and you can't have an abortion.  There's no options there.  I just cried all the way home.  I   got on a long train journey once I got home, all on my own, and then I couldn't tell anybody about what I'd gone through." 

The home movie format highlights the enormous amount of travel that Irish women must go through in order to obtain abortions, the emotional and physical impact of this travel, and the silence that inherently surrounds the journey.

60 minutes

related transcripts:
anonymous interviews
Interview with Ailbhe Smyth
Interview with Juliet Bressan
Interview with Goretti Horgan, Alliance for Choice

Video clip (choose quicktime or realplayer)
Audio clip (choose quicktime or realplayer)

For more info about abortion rights in Ireland, see the links page