THREE women have presented themselves to police in Derry claiming to having broken the North’s abortion laws.
Diana King, 71, Colette Devlin, 68 and Kitty O’Kane, 69, reported to Strand Road police station on Monday evening.
They gave police a prepared statement saying they had taken delivery of abortion pills for women too afraid to have them delivered to their homes.
They were questioned and cautioned before being released pending further police inquiries
A Facebook post, uploaded while the women were being questioned, said they admitted “either providing the abortion pill or taking it themselves”.
It added: “People handing themselves in highlights the unworkability of the law.
“It lays bare the hypocrisy of the government and pressures the state to scrap it.
“If the police wish to criminalise one woman for a crime that so many of us have committed, then there can be no exception to the law, we must be arrested as well.
“Prisons would be filled to the brim if the law was actually enforced.”
A solicitor for the women said they were questioned by police officers for about three hours before being cautioned and released pending a report to the Public Prosecution Service.
A 21-year-old woman, who bought drugs on the internet to induce a miscarriage, was last month given a suspended sentence at Belfast Crown Court.
She bought two types of drugs online, took them and then miscarried on 12 July 2014.
The 1967 Abortion Act, which established legal abortion, has never applied in Northern Ireland.
A second case of a woman buying similar pills is still pending at Belfast Crown Court.
The women walking into Strand Road PSNI station in Derry on Monday night