Women’s Podcast: ‘We disagree on the referendum, but we’re still friends’

Two older voters discuss their opposing views on abortion with Kathy Sheridan


Two 79-year-old friends, Ann Ingle and Mary Fleming, are on opposite sides when it comes to the referendum on the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which recognises the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn.

On the latest episode of the Women’s Podcast, Fleming tells Kathy Sheridan why she will be voting no on May 25th.

“I feel the baby is a baby at that stage, I wouldn’t go out and kill somebody, and I feel abortion is killing a baby,” she says.

Ingle, meanwhile, who endured a traumatic backstreet abortion in England in the 1960s, will be voting yes.

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“Call me a murderer if you like, but if I’d had that baby I wouldn’t have gone on to have eight more children,” she tells the podcast.

In a robust conversation, the women, who are in a writers group together, explain how, even though they disagree strongly on the issue of abortion, they won’t be falling out with each other over the referendum.

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