Northern Ireland police raided premises searching for abortion pills

The Police Service of Northern Ireland raided two premises on International Women’s Day searching for abortion pills that are illegal in the region.

No pills were found during searches last week, including one at a workshop belonging to Belfast pro-choice campaigner Helen Crickard. Crickard said she felt “violated and humiliated” over the raids on her premises in South Belfast.

The PSNI confirmed on Monday that the raids had taken place. Det Supt Bobby Singleton stressed that abortion was a “sensitive issue that divides opinion within society”.

However, Singleton added that where an offence has been committed, the PSNI had a duty to bring offenders to justice.

Unlike the rest of the UK, doctors cannot prescribe abortion pills in Northern Ireland.

Singleton said: “Offences of procurement of an abortion are outlined in Sections 58 & 59 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and Child Destruction Sect 25 (1) Criminal Justice (NI) Act.

“These offences can reasonably be suspected in circumstances where persons order prescription medications which are known to be used or advertised as suitable for inducing an abortion.”

Last year three women handed themselves into a police station in Derry, stating they had procured and taken illegal abortion pills and requested that they be prosecuted, in protest at Northern Ireland’s restrictive abortion laws. Since then, pro-choice campaigners have continued to challenge the PSNI to arrest them after they admitted purchasing abortion pills for other women in Northern Ireland.

Also in 2016, a 21-year-old woman was given a suspended prison sentence for buying drugs online to induce a miscarriage. She had been reported by her flatmates after they found out she had taken the abortion pills leading to a termination.

A mother is also facing prosecution for procuring abortion pills for her then underage daughter who fell pregnant.

Women in Northern Ireland who want to terminate a pregnancy can either travel to England or Wales for an abortion at a cost of around £1,000-£2,000. Northern Ireland residents are not eligible for the procedure on the NHS and have to pay for private treatment, as well as the cost of the flight and hotels.

Alternatively women at an early stage of pregnancy can buy mifepristone and misoprostol pills online, for around £60; the pills are considered safe and reliable in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. As well as buying the pills on the internet, pro-choice campaigners have also flown the drugs into Northern Ireland via drones.

Northern Ireland police raided premises searching for abortion pills

Couples searching for IVF "face unfair postcode lottery"

Couples in London and the South East are becoming denied IVF treatment supplied in other parts of the country since of a “geographical fortunate dip”, a Conservative MP claims.

Caroline Dinenage, MP for Gosport in Hampshire, explained a “desperate unfair postcode lottery dictates” who receives IVF on the NHS. “The geographical discrepancies are stark,” she stated. “A couple in the North East or East Anglia will find that they have entry to IVF in line with or above the Nationwide Institute for Wellness and Clinical Excellence guidance.

“But couples in the South East will find that they are only in a position to access one particular round of treatment method.”

Ms Dinenage wrote for the internet site Conservativehome on the subject. She claimed that guys and women who had been desperate to have a child were getting forced to go personal to achieve fertility treatment. She called for the treatment to be standardised.

“People’s odds of having a kid when they cannot conceive naturally should not be down to a geographical fortunate dip,” she stated. “Access to a sensible quantity of IVF therapy must be universally offered to individuals who want it.”

Couples searching for IVF "face unfair postcode lottery"

Searching stunning in sequinned socks – a quite Tory solution to the sports gender gap | Alex Andreou

Helen Grant, holder of ‘a portfolio so disparate it may well as nicely be Miscellaneous Stuff None of The Guys Needed to Do’. Photograph: Jan Kruger/Getty Photographs

Helen Grant, the minister for sports, equalities and tourism – a portfolio so disparate it may as well be Miscellaneous Things None of The Men Wanted to Do – has uncovered the centrepiece of government policy to tackle the gender gap in sports activities uptake. It essentially boils down to encouraging ladies to engage in sports that involve cuter outfits.

The complete interview in which Grant described her views reads like some thing scripted for an edition of Brass Eye. She suggests “[t]here are some superb sports which you can do and execute to a very high degree and I feel people participating look absolutely radiant and very feminine this kind of as ballet, gymnastics, cheerleading and even roller-skating.” For adult females, she suggests “a Zumba class or a game of rounders following they’ve dropped the kids off”. She described her response when, just lately, she was a spectator at a roller-blading occasion: “Individuals women arrived and they looked definitely lovely. They have been sporting their socks pulled up, gorgeous socks with sequins and their hair was accomplished.”

The government has identified a gender gap in sports activities uptake – the recognition of the difficulty is a important phase. It needs to encourage more women to get up sport – this is an admirable objective. It has recognized that stereotypes about femininity may possibly play an essential element in this gender gap – an excellent and crucial observation. To then determine that part of the resolution entails classifying some sports as “butch” and other people as “girlie”, to endorse this kind of stereotypes, seems to me to display a cackhandedness which no volume of sequinned socks can make palatable. How does it inspire ladies to consider up sport, by incorporating to the strain of sportswomen to search “feminine” – what ever that entails – and incorporating to the scrutiny of their look, consistently alluded to by male sport commentators? Remember John Inverdale’s idiotic comments about Marion Bartoli’s physical appearance, as she won Wimbledon.

It is only superficially surprising to hear this kind of policies expressed by a female minister in David Cameron’s government. Cameron does not just have a “ladies difficulty” he has many. Support for his celebration from females is declining and has been for some time. The party is losing female MPs left, correct and centre – some resigning mid-phrase, some declaring they will not stand yet again, whilst other individuals are controversially deselected, as rumour has it, for being “a silly girl”.

The prime minister himself has appeared, on occasion, unable to quit himself from making remarks with a sexist hue, like telling Angela Eagle, a parliamentarian of expertise and clout, to “calm down dear”.

Cameron is under stress to appoint female MPs to ministerial positions, but the pool from which he can pick is small and ever-diminishing. He is taunted by Miliband for his all-male frontbench. Former female Tory MPs like Anne Widdecombe are queueing up to criticise “silly modern day” ones. The strategic Cabinet coalition committee contains not a single woman.

Secretary of state Philip Hammond would seem unable to distinguish amongst female shadow ministers, repeatedly mistaking Liz Kendall for Rachel Reeves on the BBC’s Query Time on Thursday evening. In his defence, he has been in back-to-back Cobra meetings and has most likely not witnessed a girl in two weeks.

In this hostile setting, with whom might junior ministers like Helen Grant discuss tips, to discover their flaws? If 1 can only poll rich, straight, white, middle-aged men on regardless of whether they would like to see a lot more girls cheerleading in tight lycra outfits, the answer ought to hardly come as a shock.

All this contributes to the government’s female deficit, but the dilemma, I feel, runs deeper than that. Conservative ideology explicitly seeks to preserve conventional values and roles and this involves gender ones. With Thatcher’s legacy fading, the Tory celebration might in no way yet again be a all-natural political house for ladies.

Searching stunning in sequinned socks – a quite Tory solution to the sports gender gap | Alex Andreou