Viewers of BBC drama Three Families were left sobbing as they watched the stories of women impacted by Northern Ireland s restrictive abortion laws.
The two-part series, which continues tonight, is based on writer Gwyneth Hughes s conversations with three women who were seeking an abortion in 2013, six years before the procedure was decriminalised in Northern Ireland.
Last night s episode introduced two of the women: Hannah (Amy James-Kelly), who is forced to go through with a pregnancy even after learning the foetus has a fatal abnormality, and Theresa (Sinéad Keenan), who is arrested after ordering termination pills for her teenage daughter who was forced into sex by her violent boyfriend.
Last modified on Wed 12 May 2021 08.28 EDT
It was only a couple of years ago, Iâd warrant, that the majority of people in Great Britain became aware of the fact that, although the 1967 Abortion Act has permitted the termination of unwanted pregnancies for the past 50-odd years, its remit never extended to Northern Ireland. An extraordinary grassroots campaign to give the countryâs women the same rights that exist in England culminated in Westminster forcing the decriminalisation of the procedure in 2019.
Gwyneth Hughesâs drama Three Families (BBC One) began in 2013 and took in the situation at the time, and the fight for liberalisation of the law, through a series of personal rather than political lenses. The trio of narratives were based on Hughesâs interviews with three women whose lives were altered by the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
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