At the start of the referendum campaign in March, I took this photograph showing the poster image of Savita, who died because of the 8th amendment, and in the background a huge billboard with a CGI / cartoon of what is meant to be an 11 week old foetus. Both have the common slogan ‘one of us’ – the photograph invites us to consider if the life of this 31-year-old woman of colour, who was denied a life-saving abortion, really has the same value as an anonymous and unknown 11-week-old foetus.
This is the question we will be voting on this Friday, indeed beyond that we are voting on whether a doctor who gives a life-saving abortion in a Savita-like case should have the threat of a 14-year jail sentence hanging over them – as the 2013 law lays down – whether any of the hundreds of pregnant people taking abortion pills at home in Ireland should be doing so under the risk of that 14-year sentence. That is the law as it stands – to change it, the 8th must be repealed.
Last night we received information (screen shot above) that the No campaign intend to engage in Trump style voter suppression methods by trying to get their people appointed as personation officers at polling stations. They intend to target stations likely to have a high Yes voter the hope that increasing the number of challenges will result in enough Yes voters being unable vote to make a difference if, as is still possible, the result is close. Be sure to bring ID when you go to vote on Friday, the polling card is NOT in itself ID.
In a pattern all to common across rural Ireland hundreds of Yes posters were torn down in an organised fashion by what had to be No activists across Country Cork last night. This anti-democratic rage typifies the No campaign which has has so much wealth that it is printing 10 No posters to every Yes. All across Ireland the few Yes posters there are to distribute have been torn down, in one case we have heard of in the west they have even been discovered in the houses of No campaigners. This is ahead of the May 25th referendum to remove the article of the Irish constitution that equates the life of a women with that of a foetus.
In the week before the 1995 divorce referendum the catholic bishops put out a statement commanding their flock to vote No. The WSM reacted to this by putting up posters reading ‘The bishops; They hid priests who raped children and now they want to lecture us about morals.." illustrated with a photograph of Father Brendan Smyth who had raped at least 143 children and whose religious order had hid these actions from the police. The enquiry had found that "..despite knowing his history of abusing children, the Norbertine religious order moved Smyth to different dioceses where he abused more children.."
Over the last few days the mainstream media in Ireland has finally woken up to the way money from far right US evangelicals is being used to buy the No vote in the referendum campaign. Here we show you how to see how you are being targeted and discuss what this means for the referendum and any conception of democracy not based on the ‘one dollar, one vote’ favoured by the elite.
As the referendum to remove the 8th amendment approaches in Ireland the No campaign are turning to increasingly nasty shock tactics. The 8th amendment passed in 1983 removes healthcare control from pregnant people and puts it in the hands of the courts, it was inserted to ban abortion but in fact impacts every aspect of pregnancy.
