In a hearing before the Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection in Ireland’s Dáil, Captain Evan Cullen revealed female pilots are being forced to choose between their jobs and carrying their pregnancies to term.
Cullen leads the Irish Air Line Pilots’ Association, and according to him, female pilots are being told “you have a choice, you terminate your employment or you terminate your pregnancy. You can’t have both.”
Since the Irish Parliament recently signed The Regulation of the Termination of Pregnancy Bill, allowing abortions for any reason up until 12 weeks of pregnancy, it is not unsurprising to see the further dehumanization of the unborn in this fashion. As Cullen has explained, half of all pilots serving airlines registered in Ireland are self-employed contractors, making them hesitant to report on the poor working conditions.
Self-employed pilots do not have the same benefits as regularly employed pilots, and they have been hesitant to speak out on a number of issues, such as pensions and wages, sick pay, collective bargaining, as well as maternity leave and other issues. Dáil member Joan Collins voiced her concern for “what is happening to women,” and Collins believes it is a result of multinational companies using Ireland as a tax haven.
Collins expressed her fear that with the conditions women are facing, employment is returning “to the days of 1916” where “people are going down to the docks and looking for work and really afraid they are not going to get that work.”
The position these women are in strips them of their rights and makes them feel pressured to seek out an abortion in order to protect their career. Dáil member Paul Murphy described the details Cullen supplied the committee with as “horrifying.” Elaborating on the situation further, Murphy stated: “The idea that any woman would have been effectively forced to choose between her employment and her pregnancy, and would have been faced with a situation of being forced to have a termination in order to maintain her employment is obviously horrifying.”
Labor Senator Ged Nash concurred, referring to the horrific scenario described to them by Cullen as “an utter disgrace.” Cullen was then asked to confirm if he knew of a situation where a woman would have kept her pregnancy if she did not believe her job was at risk. On this, Cullen said,”Female pilots have told me that they’ve terminated pregnancies because they had no entitlement to maternity leave and therefore no guarantee of a job after they came back.”
The blatant refusal of employers to offer women support during their pregnancy is an unfortunate side-effect of abortion being presented as an available option. Far from being a choice, each abortion is a sign that a woman felt she had no other option. When places of employment refuse to offer benefits such as maternity leave, and instead punish women for becoming pregnant, a female worker may feel coerced into abortion.
With abortion now legal in Ireland for the first time this year, there is no incentive for employers to provide women with the resources they need to accommodate their pregnancies. It’s incredible how fast that has led to workplace environments less supportive of pregnant women.
Samantha Kamman writes for LoneConservative.com.
