WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:06.460 --> 00:00:09.980 I'm not one of those lawyers who became a lawyer because I loved the law. 00:00:09.990 --> 00:00:13.349 I actually became a lawyer because I thought the law could be a useful tool 00:00:13.349 --> 00:00:17.520 for social justice. So that's the background that I've come from. So law 00:00:17.520 --> 00:00:22.220 was one of a range of options and I thought that law could be used to 00:00:22.220 --> 00:00:27.239 support individuals and help individuals, and help improve the lives of 00:00:27.240 --> 00:00:30.320 individuals, so that's really what motivates me in doing these cases. 00:00:35.020 --> 00:00:39.560 So Northern Irish women and girls are in a very, very different position - and the 00:00:39.560 --> 00:00:43.400 position in Northern Ireland is that it has one of the most restrictive laws on 00:00:43.410 --> 00:00:45.840 abortion rights throughout the entirety of Europe, 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:50.310 and indeed across the world. So there is currently in Northern Ireland the 00:00:50.310 --> 00:00:54.060 possibility of a life sentence for someone who either obtains an abortion 00:00:54.060 --> 00:00:57.960 or gives assistance in procuring an 00:00:57.960 --> 00:01:02.980 abortion. So that is very far removed from the position in the rest of the UK. 00:01:02.980 --> 00:01:06.240 At the most recent case that I acted in with the humanists in relation to 00:01:06.240 --> 00:01:10.410 abortion rights concerned some very extreme categories of case in Northern 00:01:10.410 --> 00:01:14.700 Ireland. So it concerned women and girls who were pregnant as a result of rape or 00:01:14.700 --> 00:01:19.050 incest, so who'd become pregnant through sexual violence, and wanted to have an 00:01:19.050 --> 00:01:23.250 abortion and were unable to do so. Their choices were very, very stark. Their 00:01:23.250 --> 00:01:28.410 choices were either continue with the pregnancy and have an unwanted child 00:01:28.410 --> 00:01:34.320 and a connection permanently to their rapist, their abuser, or break the law in 00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:38.580 Northern Ireland by, for example, obtaining abortion pills and face the 00:01:38.580 --> 00:01:42.290 risk of prosecution. Many women have been prosecuted in the last number of months 00:01:42.290 --> 00:01:47.070 for taking abortion pills - or scraped together the money to try to travel over 00:01:47.070 --> 00:01:53.040 to England in order to have an abortion here, and to access basic healthcare 00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:56.820 services, here in England, not available to them at home. And that's a very 00:01:56.820 --> 00:02:00.810 difficult decision for many women, and also it's a decision which, of course, 00:02:00.810 --> 00:02:04.500 means even if they have the money and they travel over, they're going to be 00:02:04.500 --> 00:02:07.409 away from their support network and it makes what is an incredibly difficult, 00:02:07.409 --> 00:02:12.989 very, very personal decision, all the more difficult. The other main category of 00:02:12.989 --> 00:02:17.310 case that we were looking at there concerned fatal foetal abnormality cases. 00:02:17.310 --> 00:02:22.019 So women like Sarah Ewart, who have a much loved, much wanted pregnancy, and who 00:02:22.019 --> 00:02:25.890 discover at a late stage in their pregnancy that the foetus is not viable. 00:02:25.890 --> 00:02:31.650 And there, in circumstances where if that happened to a woman in England or 00:02:31.650 --> 00:02:36.180 happened to a woman in Scotland, she could promptly have a procedure, very 00:02:36.180 --> 00:02:39.540 close to her own home and near her support network, in Northern Ireland the 00:02:39.540 --> 00:02:44.720 only options, again, are: be criminalised, continue with the pregnancy, 00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:50.750 or travel and have to go through that journey. And then one final case: there's 00:02:50.750 --> 00:02:54.350 a case called JR76 which the humanists are involved in at the moment, 00:02:54.350 --> 00:02:58.160 and that concerns a young girl who became pregnant in circumstances where 00:02:58.160 --> 00:03:03.140 she was in an abusive relationship with an older man. She became pregnant, her 00:03:03.140 --> 00:03:07.250 mother obtained abortion pills for her, which she took, and when she had abnormal 00:03:07.250 --> 00:03:11.180 bleeding she was taken to the doctor. And the result of her mother taking her to 00:03:11.180 --> 00:03:15.170 the doctor in those circumstances, is that the mother has now been prosecuted 00:03:15.170 --> 00:03:19.970 for assisting with her procuring an abortion. And that raises very serious 00:03:19.970 --> 00:03:25.010 public interest concerns. It raises very serious concerns about what is going to 00:03:25.010 --> 00:03:29.330 happen in future cases when someone has abnormal bleeding. There's an obvious 00:03:29.330 --> 00:03:32.480 chilling effect from this prosecution, which might mean that women won't come 00:03:32.480 --> 00:03:37.370 forward, and won't go and seek medical help, and that could obviously put 00:03:37.370 --> 00:03:40.240 women's lives and their health at risk. 00:03:45.020 --> 00:03:49.459 There's a Roald Dahl quote which I won't get quite right, but it says, in essence, 00:03:49.459 --> 00:03:53.959 that lukewarm is no good, white hot and passionate is the only way to be. 00:03:53.959 --> 00:03:59.090 And I have it on the wall in my room, amongst pictures of a number of my clients that 00:03:59.090 --> 00:04:02.870 I've acted for over the last number of years, who really drive and inspire me. 00:04:02.870 --> 00:04:07.670 And I look at that whenever I'm having a bad day and it reminds me that actually, 00:04:07.670 --> 00:04:11.239 in order to do this job, and do this job well, we've got to be white hot and 00:04:11.239 --> 00:04:16.519 passionate. We've got to be completely driven and we've got to be motivated 00:04:16.519 --> 00:04:21.289 to try to get the right result. I think on days when you get the 00:04:21.289 --> 00:04:24.880 right result, this is the best job in the world, because our clients are so 00:04:24.880 --> 00:04:29.780 critically important and impressive, and the issues are so important. And when we 00:04:29.780 --> 00:04:33.800 get the right result, you have used the law to change things for the better.