By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund

The Republic of Ireland sticks in the craw of the world's abortion advocates. A modern, civilized European democracy, it resists the tide of abortion legalization and remains one of the few western countries where the killing of unborn children is not legal. And to top it all off, it has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in all the world.

Keep that in mind as you read this story about abortion drugs (RU486 and a prostaglandin) being shipped into Ireland.

Customs agents of the Irish government seized 1,216 packages that were shipped to Ireland in 2009, the Irish Times reported (10/26/10). Most of these were the prostaglandin misoprostol (1,118 units) while the remainder were RU486/mifepristone (98 units).

In the U.S. and in many other countries, these drugs have been used together to chemically induce abortions over a period of several days. Mifepristone starves the baby and, a day or two later, misoprostol stimulates powerful contractions to expel the tiny corpse.

In many countries where RU486 is not legal but misoprostol is legal for purposes other than abortion, many women have tried using the misoprostol alone to induce their abortions. However it does not induce an abortion in a significant percentage of women and has been associated with a high number of developmental anomalies among those children who do survive (see NRL News, 6/9/98 and 7/8/98).

Laws against abortion from the 1860s were held over when Ireland gained independence in the 1920s. The nation's intention to protect unborn life became clear with the popular passage of the "Pro-Life Amendment" to the Constitution of Ireland in 1983.

Since that time, supporters of abortions have tried through the courts and through referendums to try to weaken the law. They've brought forward "hard cases" such as a minor pregnant by statutory rape who is suicidal. They've further argued that women had a "right to information" about abortion and a "right to travel" to a country where abortion is legal.

Ireland was the first nation targeted by the "Women on Waves" campaign, in which a fully equipped "abortion ship" went to Ireland in 2001 and anchored 12 miles offshore in international waters (The Mirror, July 8, 2002.) They offered women two-step chemical abortions-- presumably, mifepristone and misoprostol.

Owing to licensing issues with the Dutch government, where the ship was registered, the ship was unable to perform any abortions, but it generated a lot of publicity for the pro-abortion cause. Women on Waves claimed that its effort exposed a demand for abortion in Ireland, generating some 80 calls from women requesting services. Workshops held on the ship helped to enlist members of the artistic community and to organize medical and legal support for abortion in Ireland. (www.womenonwaves.org, accessed 10/29/10).

Nothing in the latest news report tells us from where or from whom women in Ireland ordered the abortion drugs, but it is interesting to note the evolution of the Women on Waves (WOW) campaign following the Irish effort.

After its voyage to Ireland, WOW took the abortion ship to Poland in 2003, Portugal in 2004, and then to Spain in 2008. But in June of 2008, WOW began trying a new tactic.

In Ecuador, instead of sending a ship, WOW set up an abortion "hotline" where women could call to get information how to use misoprostol to do abortions on themselves at home. This same information is also available on WOW's general website (www.womenonwaves.org. accessed 11/1/10). This is in fact the very same abortion drug the Irish Times said was found in the majority of shipments seized by customs agents (10/26/10).

WOW put similar abortion hotlines in place in Argentina and Chile in 2009, and Pakistan and Peru in 2010 (www.womenonwaves.org, accessed 11/1/10).

WOW was also part of another web-based program in which women from countries where abortion is illegal can order abortion pills over the internet after answering a series of questions (www.womenonweb.org, accessed 11/1/10). There is a link to this program on the section of the WOW website devoted to the Ireland campaign (www.womenonwaves.org, accessed 11/1/10) .

WOW is part of a larger move in the world to promote the use of misoprostol as a cheap, easily accessible abortifacient. In the Spring of 2008, IPAS' Abortion Magazine ran a feature describing how, with a wink and a nod, women and doctors were able to get around the Uruguayan prohibition of abortion by obtaining prescriptions of misoprostol for other purposes.

Gynuity, another major player in the worldwide promotion of abortion, publishes a pamphlet entitled "Instructions for Use: Abortion Induction with Misoprostol in Pregnancies up to 9 Weeks LMP." It can be found on line and is available in English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Portugese, Russian, and Turkish. (These programs and more were discussed in more detail in National Right to Life News Today, 8/4/10.)

News accounts do not say how, but apparently Irish customs agents knew to search for (or at least recognized) packages containing these abortifacients being shipped into Ireland.

Pro-abortion groups have seized upon the seizures to claim that there is unmet demand for abortion in Ireland. "It is time to face up to the reality that Irish women will go to desperate lengths and take huge risks to end pregnancies they feel they cannot continue," Sinéad Ahern, spokesperson for Choice Ireland, told the Irish Times (10/26/10).

The truth is, however, that both women and unborn children are better off in Ireland, a nation with pro-life policies. Though some 4,422 women traveled to Britain, Ireland's closest neighbor, to obtain abortions in 2009, this still yields an abortion rate substantially lower than that those found in most other western countries where abortion is legal.

Against claims that legal protection for the unborn drives women into unsafe "back street" abortions stands the fact that over the years pro-life Ireland has continued to have one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world. In the most recent report from the World Health Organization (WHO), Ireland had lower maternal mortality rates than many other western societies-- lower than the U.S., lower than Germany, lower than Spain, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, and other places where abortion is legal and prevalent (WHO, Maternal Mortality in 2005).

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