The Republic of Ireland has one of the most restrictive abortion legislation in the world. It has been estimated that between 1980 and 2015, at least 166,951 girls and women travelled abroad to access abortion services. This legislation have been strongly criticized by several International human rights bodies, but still women keep travelling. The overall aim of the project was to explore the impact of legislation on women and create a new solution to assist their experience.

Stigma, organisation of the travel, cost of travelling and procedure, lack of of access to accurate information and post-abortion care, lack of mobility, waiting time, loneliness, are just some of the issues that women who experience abortion face. Two were the key constraints in the project: Most of the organisations were not able to enrol women in the project because of their policy of confidentiality and a condition of fear and guilt prevent women to speak openly and publicly.

Literature analysis and interviews with several stakeholders gave an understanding of the legislative development of abortion and the issues related to the context, but in order to focus the project towards women’s needs and involve women I carried out different grassroots activities: online survey, stands in the streets, flyers in the universities, a wordpress blog and a twitter account. Insights and conclusions were then distilled into personas and design challenges. The material fed into a workshops, where the stakeholders ideated on different aspects of womens’ stories. I then reframed the project around a central question: “How to create a safe, inclusive and non-judgemental space for women to assist their experience?”. I presented four concepts to answer this question via a series of co-design workshop with women. All participants opted for involving women to share their experience in an online forum. I elaborated this idea further via a prototype, resulting in Abortion Talks.

Abortion Talk is an online forum that brings together women and serves as a platform for discussion concerning the abortion experience. The forum helps women to connect with each other and share valuable information to assist other women’s journey and reduce the emotional distress. Specifically, a practical information about the steps to follow during the journey and through a registration process is possible to access to the discussions threads.

The prototype has been shared and made available on social media to be tested. The reactions have been extremely positive. The project is currently undergoing with a major involvement of stakeholders and a crowdfunding initiative.

End-user during intervention