STORY 7
Current abortion law hits us, women, hard. There's no age limit, no skin colour matters neither our place of origin. It just happens that we are immigrants from another EU country.
My sister-in-law became pregnant. Pretty quickly we found out that the fetus had abnormalities. Further tests revealed trisomy 13, one of the kidneys was shut, heart abnormalities. No chance of survival. Wouldn't live past the second trimester.
It was like a hammer blow to our heads. Frantically, we were searching for help, rescue, a miracle... Guess what, it never happened...
My sister-in-law, let's call her Kasia, was a ball of pain, mental torture and distraught. She cried from the moment her other kids left for school, until the very moment they were back. She cried at night. Every. Single. Night. She did not eat. She did not sleep. She existed but did not live.
It was horrendous to watch.
My brother was like a walking bomb. Ready to explode at any second. We walked around them on our tip toes.
They stopped going to the town, as they were constantly asked about the due date and name for the baby and "did you buy buggy yet?". What were they to say? "No, we didn't. But did you know how expensive baby coffins are?"?.
Doctors were straight forward: go to England and have an abortion. Every single one of them said so. That's ALL the help they have received.
Decision was made. My brother went to Belfast where he was met by a person working in one of the abortion foundations. He received tablets and information.
It was horrendous time. The baby arrived at home. I delivered it. It was severaly deformed. Severely disabled.
We cried. We cuddled it. We kissed it. We loved it. No questions were raised by anyone after.
It received a beautiful goodbye and proper funeral.
The lack of option of legal abortion put so much unnecessary pain on us.
It took me 2 years to seek for help. I was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. And I was only a sister! What did THEY go through?! Can you imagine?
Let me highlight it again: no support was given. Abortion was suggested by every single doctor we have met. And we met many.
No support for breasts full of milk. GP did not even know how to deal with it. Again, we were organising resources ourselves.
The cost of the funeral wiped my credit card clean. But I had to help. That's what you do.
This experience broke us. We were expected to deal with everything by the Irish system. Doctors gave their views. Funeral director gave his bill. The only helping hand came from Northern Ireland.
Lonely. That's how we felt. Lonely.