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Abortion boat vows to return
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ABORTION rights campaigners who sailed a floating clinic to Ireland to challenge its tough laws vowed on Friday to return after admitting they lacked permission to conduct abortions.
Kathleen O'Neill, spokeswoman for the Irish chapter of the Dutch-based Women on Waves group, said the converted fishing trawler Aurora, which docked in Dublin on Thursday, lacked an ecessary medical inspection from the Dutch government.
"The ship is medically certified and all of that but in order to obtain a licence to practice or to have abortions outside the territorial waters we needed a medical inspection," she said.
She was referring to plans that the group had announced in advance to provide medical abortions to Irish women by sailing them into international waters where Ireland's abortion laws, the most restrictive in the EU, would not apply.
O'Neill said that the ship, which entered Dublin harbour on a huge wave of international media attention, would be used as avenue for counseling and that after it leaves, following a visit to the southern city of Cork next week, it would return.
"We're probably bringing the ship back in a month, when the licence is there and there are some legal things on the Irish side that need to be sorted," she said.
She said the women would still receive counselling and would be advised of how to proceed with abortions if they so choose.
She said this may still require a trip outside the country, "but they'll be doing it with a lot more support and at a much lower cost". Some 6,000 Irish women travel to Britain annually for the procedure.
Overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland enshrines the right to life for mother and unborn child in an amendment to its constitution and permits women to travel abroad for abortions but has such restrictions at home that abortions are never done legally.
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