Workers Solidarity Movement

Choice is a political issue.  I emigrated to the UK in the 80’s and when I returned to Dublin it was the X-case which politicised me.  It was incomprehensible to me as a 23 year old that this young 14 year old girl who had been raped was not allowed to leave the country.  

 

I was not the only one who felt strongly about this, and there were massive marches asking for the young woman to be let go to the UK to have an abortion. That was 1992 [in the picture I am there holding the placard on the left]. I felt like I had to leave this place to come back and see it with new eyes, and see how dysfunctional it truly was, and remains. 

Now 25 years on,  we still do not have free, safe and legal abortion here.  We still have the 8th Amendment in the constitution and that has to be repealed.  That is the first step.  People power is the only way that such freedoms are won.  Successive politicians, parties and governments have allowed this dysfunction to continue, which has led to deaths, suicides and untold misery for thousands of women here.   This has to stop.   We cannot trust the same powers that be, who have done nothing on this issue, and have allowed it to continue to now draft a referendum on it.  We need to be on the streets, engaged in the struggle for reproductive rights and the repeal of the 8th amendment.

 

Anarchists have a belief in individual liberty, and whilst the 8th amendment exists here, that individual liberty does not exist for women in this State.  How we got here is a long sad lesson in history involving the church and state dancing together to make us a model little country.  The battle for choice is integral to fixing the broken society that we have.  It requires us all to be engaged in that struggle.   See you on the 30th of September.

 

Archive footage from RTE of the x-case march - the WSM banner can be viewed at about 4 seconds in