Ship of Fools
Dead in the water.

By Susan E. Wills, editor, Life Insight, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
June 26, 2001 8:30 a.m.

rom the beginning the idea seemed bizarre — performing abortions on a converted fishing trawler outside the 12-mile limit of countries, like Ireland, where abortion is illegal. Anyone who has crossed the Irish Sea knows it's no duck pond. A haircut, dental cleaning, even applying mascara could be hazardous in its frequent rough swells ... but surgery! They had to be kidding. And, it turns out, they were.

The mid-June arrival in Dublin of Sea Change (as this converted fishing trawler has been dubbed) — without the requisite Dutch and Irish licenses to transport passengers, much less perform abortions and demonstrate having passed a Dutch medical inspection — forced its sponsor, Women on Waves, to admit the "abortion ship" was mostly a publicity stunt. Ship spokesman, Joke van Kampen, told reporters: "What we are really here for is to get attention for the state that Irish women are in."

The joke was on investors, whose $117,000 stake has nearly run out (the trawler costs more than $1,000/day) and on the poor, desperate Irish women who thought they could get free or cheap abortions on board. Its medical director, Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomperts, explained to the NRC Handelsblad newspaper: "If we perform 100 abortions each week during 10 months per year, each intervention will cost only 100 dollars to make the project self-supporting" and "If we can get enough donations we can do the interventions without charge."

Women on Waves claims that 250 Irishwomen signed up for abortions, many of whom cancelled flights and appointments with English abortionists. Perhaps the delay and disillusionment will prompt these poor souls to change their minds — all to the good. But it seems despicable to take advantage of their vulnerability and desperation just to make a political point and to "help rejuvenate a moribund Pro-Choice movement" in Ireland.

Mother Jones reports that the "idea for Sea Change was born [their unfortunate phrase, not mine] while Gomperts served as a physician on Greenpeace's ship, the Rainbow Warrior. Greenpeace's ability to change public policy through direct actions convinced her that similar strategies could be used" against national laws defending human life before birth. Apparently Dr. Gomperts saw no irony in applying tactics aimed at protecting sea life and opposing weapons of mass destruction to her new mission — destroying children's lives, one at a time.

Logistics do not appear well thought out. Dr. Gomperts has stated that she planned to follow Dutch law, which allows abortion up to 22 weeks' gestation, but also requires a five-day waiting period between counseling and abortion. The abortion ship might remain at dock (quite expensive, if not impossible due to crowded docks) or in harbor (accessible by light craft) during the non-killing portions of its activities and take to sea only to do abortions. At this point, something gets lost in the translation. The Women on Waves website explains:

At sea pregnancies less than seven weeks can be treated with medication (mifepristone and misoprostol). Also during land-based activities only first trimester pregnancies can be treated because the risk for complications is negligible when done with vacuum aspiration in hygienic circumstances and performed by an experienced doctor. Should a complication arise, the "A-Portable" [operating room-in-a-box] is outfitted such that all ensuing medical problems can be treated. ... Furthermore by training local medical professionals in the use of the abortion pill, techniques of vacuum aspiration and post-abortion care we will ensure that services delivered by the ship will continue to be available after it has departed [emphasis added].

Does that mean they'll offer only "RU-486" abortions at sea (up to 7 weeks) and surgical — in the first trimester — only on land where abortion is legal but inaccessible? Or will they also perform surgical abortions on the high seas? In the Mother Jones interview, Gomperts talks of first trimester surgical abortions in open waters. As horrifying as the prospect is for a woman to undergo a vacuum aspiration abortion on a trawler in rolling seas 12 miles off-shore (cervical lacerations are all too common on terra firma), picture enduring the nausea, vomiting, cramping, diarrhea, and hemorrhaging that are the normal effects of RU-486 (mifepristone/misoprostol) abortions, under those conditions.

The RU-486 regimen requires one visit for counseling, a second for administration of mifepristone, a third visit 48 hours later to be given misoprostol (after which the woman's vital signs must be observed for, generally, a minimum of four hours to deal with possible allergic reactions, hemorrhaging, precipitous drop in blood pressure causing cardiac arrest, etc.), and a fourth follow-up at 10-14 days to ensure there are no retained fetal parts, no infection, and no other complications. That means a minimum of two trips to the ship at anchor and two trips into international waters, spread out over 18-22 days. And this is supposed to be a good thing for women?

Asked about plans following the Dublin fiasco, Dr. Gomperts was vague. The ship may sail back to the Netherlands for the missing licenses, returning to Ireland in July. Or it may sail to South America. Or Africa. Having done zero abortions in its first weeks of operation, without additional investment (and who knows — a World Health Organization representative called Gomperts a "reproductive pioneer" and there's more than one billionaire throwing good money into population control) the project seems dead in the water. Just where it should be.