My name is Meg, and my wallet was stolen last Saturday night.
I know, I was tempted to change the lyrics to a Katy Perry song as well, and chastise my undiagnosed alcoholism, but all I can say for myself is that it FREAKING sucked. My wallet had both passports, my Greencard, my driver's license, bank cards for three separate countries, my cigar cutter, and the only photo I had of my father. It also had 40 Euro cash. However, when I compare that to the other items in my wallet, my only suggestion is that they use those two 20 Euro notes for loo roll.
Part of me wanted to congratulate the prick who stole my wallet. They must have been a pro. Drunk Meg is a possessive creature, and does not hand over items quickly... This may be why I often wake up with stolen pint glasses in my kitchen after I make the executive decision to drink my dinner. That being said, the professional quality of this theft was of no use to me when I was trying to convince the nice Immigration Officer of my identity, and that I really should be here.
It's been a rough week and a half.
All of the whinging aside, I became aware of how dependent we are on documents, and how much trouble we can be in once they're taken:
To begin, replacement passports can take nearly 4 weeks to process, and depending on the country, cost over 200 Euro (I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU, CANADA!).
The current statistic says that 11 women a day travel from Ireland to the UK to access abortion services. Being passport-less, I did some research. You now need to have a valid passport (even as an EU citizen) to purchase a plane ticket, and they check passports before you get on the ferry. Thus, if you were sans passport, your life might get tricky. As it stands now, the population of Ireland and Northern Ireland stands at nearly 7 million. Using my excellent math skills (okay, they aren't skills, more like common sense) that leaves us with around 3.5 million women...
There is only one clinic in the entire island of Ireland that provides abortion services. This service is limited - they're only open two days a week, and if you're more than nine weeks along, they cannot help you. To put it gently, a single office that has a two day work week is supposed to serve 3.5 million women.
.
What happens if someone was in my situation - where their documents were missing or non existent, needed an abortion? Their options would be limited; nearly prohibitive if we also consider that the procedure costs 400 Euro, and requires commuting from the Republic to the North.
Also, you would have to show up to the clinic alone - their policy stipulates that you must be unaccompanied.
So, tell me - what constitutes an undue burden for women?
As far as the pro-choice, pro-life debate is concerned, I tend to think that the labels do more harm than good. To have reservations about abortion on demand does not mean that you are against people making their own decisions. Similarly, seeking an abortion does not mean that you endorse the murder of innocents - it's much more complicated than those labels would imply. But regardless of where we fall on this spectrum, telling women with an unplanned pregnancy that their only recourse is to travel or live with it isn't good enough. Terminating pregnancies will never be without its controversies, and rightly so. It touches on so many parts of our morality, and senses of justice. But we deserve more than one clinic, and we deserve more than nine weeks to make the decision.
