In the run-up to the referendum, how do women who have had abortionsfeel about what is being said in the heated debate? One womantells Kitty Holland her story and describes her anger athow a personal decision is being turned into a political issue.

Ella travelled from her rented flat in Dublin to a clinic in Brixton, north London, for an abortion in December 1998. She was 24 years of age and eight weeks' pregnant. Her decision to terminate the pregnancy was a joint one, made with her boyfriend of 18 months.

"The choice rested on a number of factors," the bright, 27-year-old says now. From the east coast of the State, she is now an editor, working in publishing in Dublin. "But the main reason was my knowledge that I did not have the emotional stability, responsibility or maturity to have a baby at that point in my life, or a solid, loving relationship within which I would have chosen to have a baby. My then boyfriend wanted me to have a termination."

She travelled alone to London, then stayed with an old college friend who accompanied her to the Marie Stopes clinic the next day. She had made the appointment herself, having got the phone number and information at the Marie Stopes clinic in Dublin. There she had had a consultation with a doctor and a measure of counselling and advice on options other than an abortion. The procedure, once she got to the London clinic, was "quite straightforward", she explains.

"I was seen first by a woman, a nurse I think, who did a scan to confirm how far along the pregnancy was. She then asked me whether I was sure that this was what I wanted, and then I was admitted to a ward, where there were about five other women.

"There was another girl from Ireland, from Donegal or somewhere, who was about my age and seemed to be there for much the same reasons as me. She said she just couldn't have had a baby at that point in her life. She hadn't even told her boyfriend she was pregnant. She said no one knew.

"I was told to change into my night-dress and I got into bed before a male doctor came round to ask a few questions. Then a nurse came and took my blood pressure, a blood sample. Then I was told to take a shower before being brought down to an operating theatre. It sort of reminded me of a dentist's surgery. The same doctor was there, and another nurse, and I got onto the operating table. I can't exactly remember how I was 'knocked out', but I do remember being back in the ward, waking up, within an hour."

She says she expected to feel "upset". Asked why, given that she had chosen to have the abortion, she says: "I suppose because it is so drummed into you in Ireland that abortion is the most awful thing that can happen to you, that it's a terrifying, traumatic experience and that women who have it are inevitably psychologically messed up, scarred for life. But I remember waking up all groggy, looking at my pillow for a bit almost trying to feel upset and all I could sense was this huge relief that the terror and anxiety of the last few weeks was finally over. I felt like I had my life back again."

That was the immediate sensation. In the later weeks and months, however, she says that although she still felt no regret, she did feel "grief and trauma".

"The most distressing thing was, in a way, the fact that I had had to leave home, to travel to England," she says, and that when she got back she had to face "a climate of silence and then the feelings of fear and loneliness".

"The relationship I was in ended two months later. I can see now it was not emotionally honest or strong and the trauma of the abortion exposed that. I was on my own." She had "a few" good friends she could talk to, and one in particular who had herself had an abortion earlier that year, but she couldn't tell her family.

"I felt ashamed. And I felt marginalised, stigmatised and very afraid. What I needed after my abortion was emotional support and a climate open to at least trying to understand my reasons for making the choice I did. But I felt I didn't have the right to ask for this because, in Ireland, I feared I would be labelled 'guilty'. This sense of denial and exclusion greatly increased the trauma I felt."

She feels strongly that the proposed amendment to the Constitution would make this even worse. In particular she feels her situation would have been far worse if there had been a law - as proposed in the amendment - which would have made her liable for 12 years in prison, if she had had the abortion in her home country.

"I am so angry about that. So my own country would brand me a criminal if I had done here, what I did in London? But it's OK for me to go to London to do it? Has the State considered criminalising the men who equally create these unwanted pregnancies, and who in my case requested that I have an abortion?," she asks. "Does the State actually want us [the 6,000 women who travel to Britain each year for abortions\] to feel even more like the scum of society? I felt massively burdened with the weight of my 'secret'. It seemed too divisive an issue to raise with people. If this amendment is passed, would I also have to hope they would support and understand my 'crime'?" she asks.

Asked about the removal of suicide as a legitimate reason for women to seek an abortion, as in the proposed amendment, she says this would "deny the reality of what I experienced". She doesn't think she was suicidal when pregnant but was "severely psychologically distressed", and believes the removal of the suicide grounds "is in reality a denial of the validity of psychological distress as a real, meaningful experience.

"To me, it's the State saying psychological distress, or mental well-being, is not a 'real' reason for needing radical intervention. And of course it implies women can't be trusted to tell the truth about their psychological situation.

"I now see a private psychotherapist and though it's not primarily because of the abortion, we do discuss it. He has told me more than once that in his opinion I made the right decision considering my mental and emotional state at the time. He has also told me he has treated a number of women who, before having abortions, would have labelled themselves 'pro-life'. To me this is clear evidence that the abortion issue is too complex to be put to the electorate in a referendum."

She sees the "theoretical" value of the Government-established Crisis Pregnancy Agency, saying, "it signifies the State is partly admitting to the reality of crisis pregnancies". But she believes it is not adequate, "because the State is still exporting women who opt for abortion to the UK".

"I hope its [the agency's\] strategy will be to nurture a nation that has a more mature attitude toward emotional and sexual relationships and crises, but I fear its success would be endangered by resistance from Catholic sources and some parents' groups, in the same way they resisted the introduction of the Relationships and Sexual Education programme in schools." Ella didn't want an abortion, she says. She didn't want a crisis pregnancy.

"But I was an emotionally troubled person anyway, and desperately psychologically distressed when I found out I was pregnant. That's reality. In order to survive I took control of my life and chose abortion." The amendment, she concludes, is coercive and regressive. "It undermines my mental health by invalidating my right to it. It's saying I'm not trustworthy and it's saying I'm a criminal. I'm trying to remain impassive about the manipulated versions of abortion being bandied about in the run-up to the referendum.

"I'll be voting No and following my counsellor's advice that my abortion is not someone else's political or social issue, but a decision I made for valid reasons."

Name has been changed to protect her privacy