Saturday 23 August saw a second large pro choice ‘Our Bodies Our Rights: Rally to Repeal the 8th Amendment’ march through Dublin bringing the number who took part in emergency mobilisations in Dublin alone over 3,000.
Saturday 23 August saw a second large pro choice ‘Our Bodies Our Rights: Rally to Repeal the 8th Amendment’ march through Dublin bringing the number who took part in emergency mobilisations in Dublin alone over 3,000.
The demonstration and the previous one on Wednesday were called at a couple of days notice after the shocking news emerged that the Irish state had forced a migrant women through a pregnancy and an unwanted C-section (see http://www.wsm.ie/migrant-x for details)
The protest was organised jointly by Choice Ireland, Abortion Rights Campaign, Rally For Choice Ireland, ROSA – for Reproductive rights, against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity, Real-Productive Health , Aims Ireland and Actions for Choice.
They said
"This is legislation we cannot live with and we are calling for the repeal of the 8th amendment to the Constitution in order to allow free, safe, and legal abortion on request."
My photo album from the rally is on the WSM Facebook page, linked below
The Pro-Choice march was the first* third demonstration to cross the new bridge named after Rosie Hackett, a working class Dublin women who was active in the syndicalist ITGWU from its foundation and organiser of the strike of 1911 at the Dublin’s Jacob’s biscuit factory which resulted in 3000 women getting a pay rise.
Hackett was also an active member of Europe’s first workers militia, the Irish Citizens Army and during the 1916 rising was part of the rebel group which occupied Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons. With Delia Larkin she co-founded the Irish Women Workers’ Union in 1911
She was a printer and had helped print the 1916 Proclamation. After the rising she was imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail for ten days. Of the 17 bridges over the river Liffey in Dublin’s city centre 13 of these bridges are named after men, Rosie Hackett bridge is the first and only bridge named after a women.
* it appears it was in fact the 3rd as both Pride and a Greyhound lockout march had previously used the bridge
WORDS & IMAGES Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )