Irish politician Ruth Coppinger joined 30 other pro-choice activists who swallowed abortion pills on Tuesday to protest the republic's anti-abortion laws.
The activists collected the pills in Belfast, and swallowed them outside Connolly Station in Dublin during a rally, The Irish Times reports.
"We ordered these pills online through Women on Web," Coppinger said. "We got them delivered to friends of ours [in the North]. We would like to highlight that they're safe, that they're an option for women given that abortion is banned.
"Most of all the message we want to deliver today is we need to get the medieval eighth amendment out of our constitution now," she continued. "We need a referendum to repeal the eighth amendment to allow for abortion in this country for women who need it."
Women who are raped or whose babies will be stillborn are unable to obtain abortions in the Irish Republic. Abortions are now allowed when the life of the mother is threatened due to medical complications, or if she is in danger of taking her own life. That legislation came too late for Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar, who died of septic shock after being denied an abortion to remove the deceased fetus inside of her.
"A number of women have either died or suffered under the ban on abortion in this country," Coppinger said. "Savita was one and the migrant rape victim over the summer was another.
"So what are we going to do, sit around and hold vigils? We also have to protest and demand that this law is changed. The women that took the action in 1971, they were going against the tide, they were breaking the law, we're happy to challenge this unjust law today and to say the hypocrisy has to end. Enough is enough."
Coppinger's protest was modeled after the "Contraceptive Train" of 1971, when Irish Women's Liberation Movement members took a train to Belfast to collect condoms, which were illegal in the republic at the time.
Pro-life activist Caroline Simons criticized Coppinger's "abortion pill train."
"This appears to be an initiative more concerned with garnering publicity for the pro-choice cause rather than a genuine regard for women's health and wellbeing," she said. "The groups involved have no regard for the humanity of the unborn child and no interest in drawing attention to the fact that abortion has significant negative mental health consequences for many women."
