“Miss C” was 13 years-old when she was brutally raped. A shy and innocent young girl at the time, she was placed in State care to protect her from the rapist. When she discovered she was pregnant, the State brought her for an abortion in Britain against the wishes of her family – a procedure Miss C now says she did not even really understand at the time.

The abortion and its aftermath were traumatic for Miss C, and her life entered into a spiral of anxiety and depression. Now an adult, married with children, Miss C deeply regrets that her baby was taken from her through abortion.

She told the Irish Independent: “I didn’t want to become a mother at 13, but I realise now that baby didn’t deserve to die. I would have loved to give her up for adoption to somebody who really wanted kids and couldn’t have them. She’d be a teenager today and maybe we could be friends, even if she didn’t call me mammy.”

“My name – the C-case girl – is brought up on radio and TV all the time these days as if I’m an ad for abortion. The X-case girl never had an abortion in the end so we don’t know how it would have affected her, but, for me, it has been harder to deal with than the rape.

“It only really hits you after you have children. You never forget your missing baby. It plays on your mind every day. Any woman who has an abortion and then goes on to become a mother will know all about it afterward.”