Ireland: Citizens’ Assembly Submission (a woman’s abortion story)

Posted on December 16, 2016 by feministire

There are over 4,500 submissions to the Citizens’ Assembly. I am worried my story, my voice will be lost in the mass. I want to be heard; I want to be valued. I want to #repealthe8th

I am writing to tell you my story as an Irish woman living in Ireland who needed an abortion. I would like to attach my name to this as I am not ashamed; however I am now a mother to 2 small daughters and I cannot afford the risk to my family of the potential jail sentence for having needed an abortion in Ireland using the abortion pill.

It was 2010. I was 26 and studying for my Masters. I’d gone back to college when the recession hit to reskill. I was in a quite new relationship with a man I’d known for some time and had been seeing off and on for a while, and finally both of us were living in the same place and we began going out seriously. He was working in a call centre. Those jobs have no security and don’t pay well. He worked with a man who was fired for being less than 5 minutes late 3 times in 2 months – at the start of those 2 months he’d just become a father.

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Source: Feminist Ire

16.12.2016

Ireland: Strong consensus for repeal of the Eighth Amendment banning abortion

But ‘Irish Times’ Ipsos/MRBI poll suggests a legislative line will have to be drawn for any referendum to pass
October 7, 2016, Irish Times

When the new citizens assembly convenes later this month to discuss the Eighth Amendment, today’s Irish Times Ipsos/MRBI poll suggests, a three quarters-strong majority is likely to endorse repeal to allow abortion in cases of rape and of fatal foetal abnormality.

If, that is, the assembly – as billed – is accurately representative of the population as a whole – the poll is remarkably consistent in showing only small variations by gender, region and age in the strong majorities for repeal. Another abortion referendum is surely on the way.

The poll suggests that some fifth of the assembly will even be prepared to go much further and endorse what the poll question characterises (not altogether accurately) as the abortion-on-demand reality of Britain.

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Source: Irish Times

07.10.2016

Ireland: Citizens’ assembly on abortion to meet next month

Group of 100 chaired by judge Mary Laffoy to discuss future of Eighth Amendment
Sept 27, 2016o
Pat Leahy, Irish Times

The citizens’ assembly that is to discuss a possible change to the legal ban on abortion will meet for the first time in Malahide, Co Dublin next month.

The 100 members of the assembly are to due meet on Saturday, October 15th at the Grand Hotel in Malahide, where it will begin its deliberations on the future of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution which, as article 40.3.3, underpins Ireland’s strict abortion laws.

The assembly will be chaired by Supreme Court judge Mary Laffoy. Its other 99 members have been selected by pollsters Red C, and will be representative of the electorate in terms of gender, age and geography. Prospective members have not been asked their views on the issue of abortion.

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Source: Irish Times

27.09.2016

Ireland: TDs wear ‘Repeal’ sweaters amid Dáil question on abortion

Ruth Coppinger and other AAA-PBP TDs spoken to on issue as emblems not permitted
Sept 27, 2016
Marie O'Halloran

Members of the AAA-PBP group of TDs wore sweaters displaying the slogan “REPEAL” in the Dáil as Dublin West TD Ruth Coppinger raised the issue of abortion for leaders’ questions.

The six members of the group arrived into the chamber with the men wearing jackets over the sweaters until Ms Coppinger spoke.

Wearing clothing or emblems displaying party political messages in the Dáil runs counter to standing orders.

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Source: Irish Times

27.09.2016

Featured

News

#repealthe8th

Dáil as Dublin West TD Ruth Coppinger

Una Mullally: Ireland’s tipping point on abortion just took to the streets

This generation is not going to take what they have inherited in the Constitution
Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 19:00

Una Mullally

Last Friday evening, the eve of the fifth March for Choice, feminist and LGBT activist Ailbhe Smyth gave a speech at Liberty Hall. She talked about a tipping point that occurred during the summer, when the movement to repeal the Eighth Amendment took on a new momentum.

It’s hard to pinpoint when things actually change. We can attempt to triangulate with hindsight, but there is no algorithm for change. We say it’s in the air because it’s so hard to grasp. It is a coming together of moments and minds, from which a movement springs. But sometimes, the abstract becomes very real, the feeling of something happening is manifested. On Saturday, at the March for Choice organised by the Abortion Rights Campaign, the tipping point took to the streets.

“That was a long bus trip, wasn’t it?” A woman was talking to her friend in Centra on Parnell Street while ordering a sandwich at the deli counter. Men and women got up early and travelled from all parts of the country to join the estimated 30,000 who marched in the drizzle.

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Source: Irish Times

25.09.2016

The fight for abortion rights in Ireland is an international cause

As part of the ‘Repeal the 8th’ movement, Concordia professor Susan Cahill invites you to a pro-choice picnic this Saturday
Posted on September 23, 2016, Concordia University

By: Susan Cahill

This Saturday, in 23 cities — from Montreal to Melbourne, Nepal to the Netherlands — Irish emigrants and international allies will be taking part in a Global Gathering for reproductive rights in solidarity with Dublin’s March for Choice.

I will be picnicking for choice in Montreal, beginning at 10 a.m. in Jeanne-Mance Park, and so should you!

Why? At a time when reproductive rights are being clawed back around the world, when Donald Trump promises to ban abortion across the United States, it is especially important to stand up for choice, to stand with women — and anyone who needs an abortion — and raise your voices in support of change.

Ireland is the only country in the democratic world to have a constitutional ban on abortion. The country’s Eighth Amendment equates a woman’s life with that of a fetus. So when you hear Irish people calling to “Repeal the 8th,” that’s what they’re talking about.

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Source: Concordia.ca

23.09.2016

Abortion In Ireland: Repeal The 8th Amendment

By Róisín Ingle

15 Sep 2016, Grazia Daily

Abortion is illegal in Ireland - but now, thanks to an increasing army of protestors fighting to repeal the 8th amendment (the law that makes it criminal) the Irish government is considering a referendum.

Róisín Ingle, senior editor of The Irish Times, who herself travelled to England to have an abortion, reports on this critical moment.

Every Saturday, for fifteen years, readers of The Irish Times were subjected to my particular brand of professional oversharing in a weekly lifestyle column. From cringe-making relationship blunders to mortifying tights-related malfunctions, I left no personal milestone unshared. And yet there was one revelation I stopped myself from divulging time and time again: when I was in my late twenties, I had an abortion.

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Source: Grazia Daily

How a pro-choice movement in Ireland is changing the way women campaign for their reproductive rights

Wear your heart on your chest. (Repeal)

Written by Carey Dunne. Quartz
September 07, 2016

When Fia Kavanagh was 17, about to graduate from school in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, she discovered that she was pregnant. Her college entrance exams were two weeks away, and she had just broken up with her boyfriend of several years. “I knew I couldn’t give a child the life I’d want it to have,” Kavanagh says. “Two parents, brothers and sisters, a home.”

But Kavanagh didn’t have the options available to many other teenagers with unplanned pregnancies. Ireland still has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. It’s the only country in Europe besides Malta in which abortion is illegal, except when the procedure is necessary to save a woman’s life. Even in cases of pregnancy as a result of rape or incest, abortion can be punished by up to 14 years in prison.

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Source: Quartz

07.09.2016

Ireland’s Long Journey on Abortion

Bill Bragg

By SADHBH WALSHE
September 2, 2016, New York Times

DUBLIN — “Not the first or the last bleeding women about to face a long trek home.” This was one of the tweets sent this month to the Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, from a woman who was traveling abroad for an abortion.

The woman and a friend set up a Twitter account, @TwoWomenTravel, to live-tweet her experience as she flew from Ireland to England for an abortion that she could not obtain safely or legally in her own country. By documenting the dreary trip with photographs of bleak-looking places along the way, the women sought to highlight the hypocrisy of lawmakers. These politicians turn a blind eye to the thousands of Irish women who travel abroad for terminations while imposing a 14-year prison sentence on any woman who procures the same service at home.

Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion, known as the Eighth Amendment, grants a fetus the same right to life as the woman carrying it. Since the amendment was championed by Roman Catholic groups in the 1980s, successive Irish governments — despite probably fearing more for their re-election chances than for their mortal souls — have allowed the church to dictate the terms of the abortion debate.

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Source: The New York Times

Abortion in Ireland: ‘Silence is breaking 12 hearts a day’

A 2012 poster advertising a memorial for Savita Hallapanavar. Photograph: Cathal Mcnaughton/Reuters

As #TwoWomenTravel, two friends recently live-tweeted their journey to Britain for one of them to have an abortion. Another 11 women will have made the same journey every day. But is the country ready to repeal its eighth amendment?

Emer O'Toole

Monday 29 August 2016 16.21 BST

Ireland’s abortion regime has been responsible for a litany of tragedies in recent years. The death of Savita Halappanavar, denied a life-saving abortion during her miscarriage; the state-sponsored abuse of Miss Y, a suicidal teenage asylum seeker and rape victim, forced to carry her pregnancy to viability and deliver by C-section; a brain-dead woman kept alive, effectively as an incubator, against her family’s wishes. And there are plenty more mundane, yet nonetheless heartbreaking, stories of approximately 12 women a day who travel to the UK to access abortion services.

In the last year, something fundamental has shifted. The Irish pro-choice movement is getting loud. Actors and writers including Tara Flynn, Helen Linehan and Susan Cahill have shared their abortion stories, bravely breaking taboos. An “abortion bus” flouted the law to tour Ireland distributing medication. Comedian Gráinne Maguire had us all tweeting details of our periods to the taoiseach, Enda Kenny. Activist Anna Cosgrave designed distinctive Repeal jumpers, so that on any given day in Dublin you will see supporters with their commitment to repealing the 1983 eighth amendment to the constitution emblazoned across their chests. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

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Source: The Guardian

29.08.2016