Anarchist Writers

Last week a friend on Facebook was complaining that she was getting Youth Defence ads.  Youth Defence are a virulently anti-choice organisation in Ireland, probably comparable to the likes of Operation Rescue in North America.  Anyway I was curious and asked her to do a screen capture if it re-appeared which it did.  I then realised this was a parallel campaign to the one they were running in the newspapers and that it all related to the ABC case in the European courts so I wrote up the article below for the WSM site to put it into context.

 I've recovered some more of the first audio I recorded back in 2006/7.  These consist of two pro-Choice audio's recorded at protests in Dublin and several Rossport ones.  The pro-choice ones are a picket of a rogue pregnancy advice agency and a solidarity rally with 'D' who had been injuncted to prevent her traveling to England for an abortion. There are also 7 audio's related to the Rossport struggle, mostly done by Skype and mobile phone with people on the ground in Erris during protests.

I spent Saturday evening at Semora Spraoi where RAG were screening two abortion rights documentaries, 'The Coat Hanger Project' and 'Abortion Democracy : Poland/South Africa'.  The makers of both documentaries were present so the screenings were introduced by them and there was a wide ranging discussion after the films had been show.  I've included a link to an audio recording of the introductions at the end of this piece.

Three speakers talk about the pro-choice struggles in Ireland they were involved in over the last three decades. These include the 1983 anti-referendum campaign, the Womens' Information Network, the SPUC v students case, Dublin Abortion Information Campaign, X-Case, Repeal 8th Amendment, 1992 Referendum, Dublin Abortion Rights Group, Alliance for a No Vote, 1998 referendum, Choice Ireland and the D-Case.

Last night I gave a talk as part of a panel on pro-choice struggles in Ireland in NUI Maynooth.  The venue was a good measure of the huge changes around that issue over the last 20 years, it would have been impossible to imagine a pro-choice meeting in what is the catholic priest training college back in the 1980's never mind one without even an anti-choice picket in sight. Later on someone told me that the Sociology building itself had once been used to house nuns.

For the last few months (2001) Irish pro-choice activists including members of the WSM have been preparing for the arrival of the Women of the Waves ship in Ireland. This has provided the strongest focus since the X case to resume the struggle for the right of women to control their own bodies, including the right to decide whether or not to continue a pregnancy.

Around 300 people marched through the centre of Dublin on Saturday 16th Feb 2002 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 'X' case and to support a No vote in the latest anti-abortion referendum. 10 years earlier in 1992 the courts placed an injunction of a 14-year-old rape victim in order to prevent her travelling to England for an abortion. At the time not only was abortion illegal in Ireland but many activists had been prosecuted simply for providing the phone number of British clinics to pregnant women.