Today on Twitter I said that the media ought to pay as much attention to Irish women pressured by doctors into having abortions as they do to stories of rogue pro-life agencies giving inaccurate advice. The tweets in response engaged in either denial or deflection even after I provided several examples.

The denials are too ridiculous and appalling even to entertain. The deflections were more interesting, and more worrying. Perhaps my mistake in one case was to use the word ‘pressure’. This particular case involved a woman, Tanya Coonan, who was told by her doctors thirteen weeks into her pregnancy that her baby had a terminal condition.

Tanya wrote in The Irish Independent: “I was told she [the baby] would not live for much longer and an abortion in Britain was suggested by the doctor in a major Dublin maternity hospital”. Let’s allow for the sake of the argument that this is not direct pressure, but the lack of support is obvious. Doctors are very powerful people and advice of this kind will be listened to by many people. It is hardly neutral advice. It devalues the baby.

Here’s an ever starker example. This one involves Liz McDermott who appeared on Claire Byrne Live a few weeks ago.

When Liz was 20 weeks pregnant her doctors informed her that her baby would be born without legs and with only rudimentary arms. One doctor told her that her baby “would never do anything other than lie on a bed”. Liz said she felt in no way supported by the medical professionals she and her husband dealt with. Instead they experienced “a clinical deep freeze”, in Liz’s own words.

What about the example of Sinead McBreen who was told her unborn baby had Down Syndrome with a complicating condition which would mean the baby would die soon after birth?

Sinead said on the Ray D’Arcy Show: “She was devalued straight away. It was like ‘There’s an abnormality here. It doesn’t really matter,”

“Fatal foetal abnormality isn’t a medical term so that is never used. We were told the baby was not compatible with life, they said ‘It’s not going to survive’.

“This is what my issue was. There was a pressure. There was an expectation that you should terminate. There was never any support where they said ‘We’ll work through this with you’.”

Her baby, incidentally, is still alive and well past the baby stage.

In response to these examples, the chief tactic  by pro-choice campaigners on Twitter today was deflection. The main deflection was to insist that these women go either to the Gardai or to the Medical Council. Quite apart from the fact that it is entirely the business of the three women whether to do this or not, it would be the women’s word against that of their doctors meaning it would be very hard to make anything stick.

Does this mean we are to totally disregard their experiences, to dismiss them as liars or fantasists?

The wish to minimise their stories is very telling. One or two ‘twitterers’ conceded that what the doctors did was wrong, but there was little evidence of genuine outrage.

The women’s stories clearly demonstrate how ‘choice’ can easily become pressure, or at minimum an expectation to abort. Clearly some Irish doctors are helping to create this expectation.

This is a reality that pro-choice campaigners are choosing to deny, ignore or minimise because it is not convenient to their cause. These women, therefore, are not championed as they ought to be, not least by a media that ought to give at least as much attention to their terrible cases as they do to rogue pro-life counselling agencies.