Ruth Bowie wanted a baby, not an abortion, but the Dublin-based nurse was told at her 12-week scan that the foetus she was carrying had a fatal condition and wouldn't survive if she went full term.
"This was a much-wanted pregnancy, and as you can imagine we were devastated," she says more than three years later. "The hospital we attended couldn't do anything for us as legally their hands were tied."
With abortion in Ireland completely illegal in 2009, she and her husband were given the "option" of either going ahead with the doomed pregnancy or a termination across the Irish Sea. Reluctantly, they chose the latter.
"We ended up going to a horrible abortion clinic as we didn't have information about places like Liverpool Woman's Hospital where so many Irish couples have received great care. We caught an early morning flight the week after the diagnosis.
"Once inside the clinic, it was like a conveyor belt; I was finished by lunchtime. Our flight back was not until late that night. We had nowhere to go. We literally wandered the streets of an English city. I was bleeding, cramping and I'd just lost my very much wanted baby, and all I wanted to do was go home to my own bed and my mum.
"If I had my time again, I would have gone to court to test Ireland's barbaric law."
Instead, Bowie helped set up campaign group Terminations For Medical Reasons Ireland two years ago, only to find herself still disappointed at the awful treatment handed out to pregnant women in Ireland.
The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act passed by the Irish parliament last year is supposed to allow women an abortion if their life is at risk, including risk from suicide. Designed to avoid controversies such as the case of Savita Halappanavar, where a young mother, sensing she was in mortal danger due to sepsis and asking for an abortion, was denied a termination at Galway University Hospital and subsequently died. Women with fatal foetal abnormalities are still excluded from the law.
When the Fine Gael-Labour party government drove the legislation through the Irish parliament last year, they might have hoped that the abortion controversy, while not disappearing entirely, would fall far down the political agenda.
Yet the law only allows for limited abortions in Irish hospitals: when a woman's life would be in danger were she to go full term, or in cases where a woman is suicidal in such instances as rape and incest. Critics say the latest controversy, where a young suicidal rape victim was denied a termination, proves the "suicide" clause in the legislation is unworkable and loaded against women.
As for Ruth Bowie, this latest outrage is a reminder of the stark choice she faced five years ago. "I will never get over been kicked out of my own country and made to feel like a criminal at my time of need."
