An Irish woman who is live-tweeting her trip to Great Britain to obtain an abortion has thanked prime minister Enda Kenny for forcing her to “hit the road”.
The woman and a friend left Ireland at about dawn on Saturday, documenting their journey via the handle @TwoWomenTravel from 5am BST.
They described their mission: “Two women, one procedure, 48 hours away from home.”
— Two Women Travel (@TwoWomenTravel) August 20, 2016Good morning all .Thanks for all of th messages of solidarity and support.Thanks to@EndaKennyTD we’re about to hit the road.#twowomentravel
Ireland has strict laws banning abortion, with a foetus given rights equal to the woman carrying it under the eighth amendment of the constitution.
With procuring an abortion illegally carrying a prison sentence of up to 14 years, about 10 women a day are thought to travel from Ireland to Great Britain or another European country for the procedure.
With their flight scheduled to depart at 6.30am, the pair told the Guardian they would “start moving” at 4.30am.
“Pressure is on!” she added.
She declined to be interviewed but confirmed both were “well over” 18.
Their journey comes two months after a landmark ruling by the UN’s human rights committee that the Irish government subjected a woman to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for forbidding her an abortion in 2011.
Related: ‘My baby in a box’: Irish GP tells of trauma of travelling to UK for abortion
The ruling that Ireland had violated Amanda Mellet’s human rights by refusing her an abortion of a foetus with congenital defects that meant it would die in the womb or shortly after birth was expected to set an international precedent.
Pro-choice campaigners in Ireland have used Twitter to call for changes to the abortion law in the past, often hashtagging them #repealthe8th.
Irish women were encouraged to share their period stories with the taoiseach, Enda Kenny, on Twitter in November last year.
Grainne Maguire started the trend with the call: “Women of Ireland! Your vagina is their business!”
Kenny did not respond on Twitter, but has said he would not commit his Fine Gael party to a referendum on the issue, the only way to effect changes to the Irish constitution.
In April, a 21-year-old Northern Ireland woman who took abortion pills to terminate a pregnancy was sentenced to a three-month prison sentence, suspended over 12 months. Her flatmates had reported her to police.
Weeks later, three women handed themselves into a police station in Derry in protest against the laws, admitting that they had procured and taken the pills and requesting to be prosecuted.
Among them was Diana King, 72, a retired social worker, who said the treatment of women was “unforgivable”.
She said she would tell police she had procured the nine-week pills “on several occasions” but would argue she had not committed any offence.
“We know that going to jail is a possibility,” she said, “but we will be saying that we don’t think that we have done anything wrong.”
Irish woman live-tweets journey for abortion in Great Britain
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