{"id":608689,"date":"2026-07-28T18:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T18:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/608689\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T18:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T18:57:11","slug":"martina-anderson-reveals-she-had-an-abortion-so-ira-operation-could-go-ahead-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/608689\/","title":{"rendered":"Martina Anderson reveals she had an abortion so IRA operation could go ahead \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Sinn F\u00e9in MEP Martina Anderson<\/a> has revealed how she underwent an abortion in order not to jeopardise an IRA bombing mission.<\/p>\n

The former republican prisoner was 22-years-old in 1985 when she was on the run in the Republic but was preparing to join an IRA unit operating in England.<\/p>\n

The former Foyle MLA, who was ordered to stand aside from her seat by the Sinn F\u00e9in leadership in 2021, discovered she was pregnant weeks into the planning of the unspecified attack.<\/p>\n

However, she confessed that she \u201cwas not for letting my comrades down\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Suspect<\/a>\"Martina<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking on RT\u00c9<\/a> radio on Sunday to Miriam O\u2019Callaghan<\/a>, the former MEP said she never expected to make the \u201cpainful\u201d episode public but has recalled the circumstances in her autobiography Choosing the Struggle, which is published this week.<\/p>\n

She told the presenter how she wanted to write \u201cwith honesty, and I hope, integrity\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWomen like me, who had an unplanned pregnancy, and because of the circumstances that I found myself in, I put the struggle first, and I chose to have an abortion,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the hardest decision of my life. It was the most painful decision in my life. It didn\u2019t strengthen me making that decision. In fact, it broke me but I was not for letting my comrades down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Anderson, who in 1989 married fellow IRA prisoner Paul Kavanagh<\/a> in Full Sutton Prison, said she has \u201clived in silence\u201d about her ordeal for more than 40 years. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve reached a point in my life where I do believe that perhaps \u2013 and I don\u2019t know whether it will \u2013 but perhaps in the telling of the story, that it might make some small contribution to stopping the social and the moral shaming of women like me,\u201d she said <\/p>\n

\u201cI believe the time for social shaming and moral shaming needs to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 64-year-old also told how botched surgery during her time at Durham Prison robbed her of the chance to have children after a gynaecologist inmates nicknamed Dr Death removed her womb during an operation to treat polyps. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Sinn F\u00e9in MEP Martina Anderson has revealed how she underwent an abortion in order not to jeopardise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[28810,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-608689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-abortion","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116999136792481118","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}