Yesterday, 28 women marched across Westminster Bridge dragging suitcases behind them in protest against Northern Ireland's unjust abortion laws.
28 represents the number of women who travel to the UK every week from Northern Ireland to undergo an abortion, due to the hostility of the law surrounding terminations in their own territory.
Currently, women in Northern Ireland are not legally allowed to undergo a termination unless their life is at risk or if there is a risk of permanent and serious damage to the mother's physical and mental health. This is despite the fact the rest of the UK has fair access to abortions before 24 weeks of pregnancy, as provided in the 1967 Abortion Act.
The protest, organised by Amnesty International, was carried out in order to deliver a petition on the matter to Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Karen Bradley. The suitcases - reflective of the journey women are forced to make - contained the names of all 62,000 signatories on the petition. They were each labelled with luggage tags reading "Now for Northern Ireland".
Included in the group of campaigners were two stars of the Channel 4 series Derry Girls. Nicola Coughlan, who plays Clare Devlin in the sitcom, and Siobhan McSweeney, who plays Sister Michael, marched alongside 26 other women to make the important point on behalf of the women of Northern Ireland.
"We want to be here to stand up for those women who have to make those journeys so they don't have to be here. It's unfair that they are treated like criminals," Coughlan told Sky News.
The pressure for Northern Ireland to change its laws on abortion intensified following the Republic of Ireland's referendum last year, in which a majority of the population voted to legalise abortion. Before May 2018's vote, abortion was not authorised in the Republic of Ireland unless it endangered the life of the woman. No other circumstances - including rape, incest or an abnormality with the foetus - would have been accepted as reasoning for a legal termination.
All that has now changed, after abortion services were rolled out across the country from January 1, but women in the North of Ireland are still left stripped of the ability to make an individual decision on whether they continue with a pregnancy or not.
Shadow Northern Ireland minister Karin Smyth was among yesterday's protestors. She told the Press Association: "In England, women have had this right for 50 years, and somehow we think it's acceptable that women don't have the same human rights as us. That's unacceptable.
"Women are being squeezed between this argument about devolution and human rights."
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Cat is Cosmopolitan UK's features editor covering women's issues, health and current affairs. news, features and health. The route to her heart is a simple combination of pasta and cheese (somewhat ironic considering the whole health writing thing), and she finds it difficult to commit to TV series so currently has about 14 different ones on the go.
