Workers Solidarity Movement

One of our members who has been active in pro-choice struggles since the 1980's and who was one of the organisers of the X-case march gave this interview to Ideas & Action.  "I think the expert group is a joke. I know that an abortion law was drawn up over 15 years ago. A law was proposed in the Dail in April and rejected by all the leading parties. It is absurd to say that the politicians need more expert advice. In fact all the various political parties have done in the last twenty years has been to commission a report. .. the group has little to do with expertise and a lot to do with political avoidance and cowardice."

An 8 minute video from the demonstration last night at the Dail which 3000 people attended.

March on Saturday at 4pm from Parnell Square, bring a candle to light at the Dail at 5, the same time candles are being lit in Galway and elsewhere.

The opening of the Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast is a positive step forward for women’s rights and continuing battle for abortion services in Ireland.  While the 1967 Abortion Act has still not been extended to Northern Ireland due to an alliance of reactionary conservative forces from our local sectarian parties to the Churches.  This means that abortions can be carried out only to preserve the life of the mother, or if continuing the pregnancy would have other serious, permanent physical or mental health effects. There is strict assessment regarding any impact on mental well-being and the woman must consult with two clinicians.

This year has seen a re-energised campaign for abortion rights  in Ireland, starting with the Action on X campaign at the beginning of the year but Youth Defense's awful billboard campaign over the summer invigorated pro-choice activists to take full scale action. On Saturday 29th September the March for Choice was organised to mark International Day for Decriminalisation of Abortion. This has also been organised a month ahead of a publication of a report on abortion from a government appointed expert group, which will examine how the Governement will handle the abortion issue.

Saturday 29 September saw thousands march through Dublin as part of the March for Choice

This is a selection from the 180 photographs we published in our Facebook album of the March for Choice.

Saturday's Youth Defense march in Belfast saw a WSM member arrested for protesting the presence of Michael Quinn, the fascist who told the Sunday World that he would "he would have "no problem" with an Anders Breivik style-massacre" in Ireland. When Quinn was pointed out to stewards on the so called 'Rally for Life' they protected him and allowed him to continue on the march. On Sunday Youth Defence deleted posts of the picture of Quinn on the demonstration from their Facebook page and banned people who posted the picture or demanded to know why they had allowed Quinn to march. 

In this session from the 2012 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair Socialist Party TD Clare Daly and Dctors for Choice spokesperson Mary Favier look at the ongoing pro-choice struggle in Ireland and in particular at the recent attempt by Clare to get legislation for the X-case passed through the Dail.

Upwards of 50 staff and students attended a protest at NUI Maynooth today in a show of solidarity for fellow student Jerrie Ann Sullivan in the wake of the report into the Rossport “rape tape” incident released this week by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission. The impromptu protest, organised by the NUIM Politics and Sociology Society, was called to register the “abhorrence” of the rape comments incident and its handling by GSOC and Irish media. Despite the wet and windy conditions, the crowd listened to a range of speakers each of whom condemned GSOC’s handling of this particular case and policing in Corrib more generally.

Trans (or transgender) is a term for people whose gender identity and gender expression are different from the sex assigned to them at birth. Trans people have a history of receiving bigoted responses from some sections of the left, of the lesbian and gay community and some strands of feminism. One attack on transgender people has been based on the idea that trans people, by “changing gender”, reinforce existing rigid gender roles. Moving across borders of perceived gender does not reinforce existing gender-roles, any more than migration across borders of nation states reinforces the system of nation states. Many trans people are actively involved in fighting current, sexist gender stereotypes.

As has happened for the last two years, Solidarity Books and Cork WSM hosted an event on the 8^th of March to celebrate International Women's Day. This year, Cork WSM members and other activists got together to put on an evening of food, film and discussion in the city's premier radical bookshop and meeting space. Meals were prepared on site and served by Veg Out! and Lentil Disorder, and was enjoyed by a multitude of women and men from the Cork activist scene and beyond. The food fuelled an hour or more of convivial chat, as people reminisced over previous celebrations and cast an eye over feminist-themed displays in various places about the shop space.