Award Winning playwright, Deirdre Kinahan describes her heartbreak when her daughter was diagnosed with fatal foetal abnormality

I work in a world of stories yet I find this one very hard to tell.

I find it hard to tell because it is my story.
I find it hard to tell because my body convulses at the memory of it.
I find it hard to tell because I know that it can still happen as long as the Eighth Amendment stands.
Roisin was due in July. She was my third daughter. From the moment I realised I was pregnant I dreamt her into being just like I did the other two. Would she have red hair like her Daddy? Would she be giddy like her sister or a softie like the other? Would she have grey eyes? My Mother’s voice? I could see her running down the garden. See her holding her sister’s hands. We were ecstatic at the thought of her.

At 20 weeks I met my husband at the hospital, excited for our scan. I can still see our nurse’s face, I liked her. Gel on my tummy, an image in black and white, a familiar thrill…but suddenly everything shifted. Her face told me that there was something terribly wrong. My husband’s face told me that nothing would ever be the same.
What followed were days of invasive tests, indescribable confusion, consultations and increasingly crushed hope. It was confirmed that Roisin had Patau’s syndrome, a fatal foetal abnormality incompatible with life. These were words I had never heard before. Words I could barely understand. The child inside me could not live, would not live. Vital organs had not developed. She would never run down our garden. Never hold her sister’s hands.

I remember standing in the back field and howling. I was blooming but Roisin was dying. Growing to die. Kicking to die. It felt like some grotesque medieval curse. Her sisters were six and eight and drawing pictures of her. The whole house was expectation; baby blankets, plans and a new pram…but Roisin was only growing to die, a condition incompatible with life.  
I began to find our prognosis increasingly difficult to bear but what I didn’t understand at that stage was that Ireland didn’t care.
When I asked what were our options I was met with Sad Eyes. Go home and wait for your daughter to die. Nature might bring relief but we can’t. We’ll monitor you because of your age. There might be complications but our hands are tied. It was a staggering sentence for me and for the poor broken baby I carried. If nature didn’t take its course, Roisin would be born into pain. Live only for minutes. Vital organs had not developed. Incompatible with life.

The following week was a waking nightmare. My husband never left my side. After days of ludicrous bureaucracy we took a flight out of Ireland like two dogs in the night. We threw ourselves on the mercy of Liverpool Women’s Hospital and repeated all diagnostic tests. Sad Eyes. Incompatible with life.
We had to stay three days in Liverpool. The streets were decked out in green as publicans and revellers celebrated St Patrick’s day. I watched them down their green pints and wave their green flags and thought is that what it is to be Irish or is it this, THIS. To be banished and bewildered awaiting birth and death a million miles from home.
In Liverpool Women’s Hospital they gave us comfort. In Liverpool Women’s Hospital they gave us a delivery suite away from Mothers with living babies. They gave us Roisin, tiny and still.

They gave us relief. In Liverpool Women’s Hospital they gave us Roisin’s photographs and Roisin’s footprints. They even gave us a Priest. Irish. Naturally. I remember wanting to tell him that he was the reason I had to lie there so far away from home…but all I could see in him were Sad Eyes. I knew I wasn’t the first Irish woman he had sat beside. I knew he was doing his best to navigate this madness, we all were.
When we returned to our ignominious hotel my husband wrapped and double wrapped me in a duvet but nothing could stop the shaking. I thought of the taxi driver and his Sad Eyes. I thought of all the Irish women he must have taken from that hospital to this hotel and I shook and shook some more.
No woman has an abortion easily. It is a devastating and invasive process at any stage of pregnancy but sometimes it is necessary. Necessary for a woman’s health, her state of mind or her future. The Eighth Amendment to our constitution refuses to acknowledge that. The Eighth Amendment is arrogant, unmerciful and cruel. It means that Ireland will always turn her back, take the Thatcher Stance: Out. Out. Out. The grief of losing Roisin was greatly compounded by Ireland’s abandonment. We never should have had to make that journey, she and I should have been offered a termination at home.

Roisin’s ashes returned to us in a tiny box by courier. Despite Liverpool’s mercy and Ireland’s intransigence, we chose to bury her here.
And so the story is told. A further indignity. But that is what this Eight Amendment demands. That Irish women on both sides of this debate have their stories trotted out like scores. Have their pain unearthed and have their hurt spilled. I sincerely hope that it disappears forever on Friday. For all Irish women, whatever their convictions, because the Eighth Amendment is brutal, harmful and wrong. I will be Voting YES on Friday. YES for compassion and YES because I trust Irish Mothers, Sisters, Daughters. I know their love.