People encouraged to take day off to protest restrictive abortion laws or show solidarity by wearing black, posting on social media and staging walkouts
Women and pro-choice campaigners in Ireland are going on strike to protest the country’s strict anti-abortion laws.
Protesters will gather at O’Connell Bridge in central Dublin and in other cities across Ireland and worldwide to demand a referendum on abortion, which is a criminal offence under the Irish constitution.
Organiser Avril Corroon told The Independent the event was not a form of industrial action but a ‘social strike’, inspired by mass protests in Poland that led the government to reject proposals for a near-total ban on abortion.
She said people had been encouraged to take a day off to take part in demonstrations, but those unable to do so could show support for the cause by wearing black, posting on social media and staging coordinated walkouts at 12pm.
“Abortion is a workplace issue,” said Ms Corroon. “Not everyone is in a position to take a day off work, which is why we need new reproductive health laws.”
It is estimated that 12 women travel from Ireland to Great Britain every day to access a safe and legal termination.
Women who have abortions in the Republic of Ireland face up to 14 years in prison.
This is the case for all pregnancies, including those conceived as a result of rape or incest, or where the foetus cannot survive outside the womb due to a fatal abnormality.
Ms Corroon said protesters were calling for a referendum on whether Ireland should repeal the 8th amendment of its constitution, which recognises the right to life of an unborn child.
The Citizens’ Assembly, a group of 99 unelected representatives, are currently debating the future of the amendment. The results of a ballot next month will be given as a recommendation to parliament.
But Ms Corroon said this was not good enough: “Why would you ask 99 people when you could ask all of us?”
Student walkouts and demonstrations have also been planned at Irish universities including University College Dublin, where Kim Harte is a student.
Ms Harte, dressed in black for the protests, told The Independent she and her classmates planned to walk out of lectures at 12.30 to join a rally on campus, before travelling to the city centre for the march.
“Women should have access to free, safe and legal abortion. Bodily autonomy is a right,” she said. “The 8th has already caused women, such as Savita Halappanavar, to lose their lives and this is why it must be repealed.”
Ms Halappanavar died in October 2012 at a hospital in Galway after she was refused an abortion despite complications to her pregnancy.
Similar protests have also been planned at universities in the UK such as Royal Holloway, Oxford and Cambridge and in other cities across the world, including Melbourne, Berlin, Lyon and at the Irish embassy in London.
Around 100,000 women dressed in black staged an all-out strike and joined protests in more than 60 cities around Poland last October.
Women in the US are also taking part in a ‘day without women’ on International Women’s Day, following mass protests on 21 January, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as President.
Abortion has been a divisive issue for decades in Ireland where, after large street protests from both sides of the debate, a complete ban was only lifted in 2013 when terminations were allowed if a mother’s life was in danger.
However governments have been reluctant to tackle an issue they fear may alienate conservative voters, despite a waning of the influence of the catholic church.
In 2015, Ireland became the first country to adopt gay marriage by popular vote.
Icelandic women first staged a strike in 1975, with 90 per cent of the country’s female population refusing to work, do childcare or housework as they demanded equal rights with men.
Source: The Independent
Abortion - Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information 
March 8, 2017 at 12:07 pm
Good for them!
To the question, “What is your position on abortion?” the response any good candidate for any Irish office would be, “I will defend your right to have as many children as you want. If others want you to have more children than that, I will see they personally pay the full cost of raising them.”
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March 9, 2017 at 4:25 am
And if they refuse, I’ll kill them myself, uh, guess I don’t have the guts to do that, but I’ll pay someone else to do it for me.
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March 9, 2017 at 8:06 am
No, it’s “If they refuse, I’ll mock them.”
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March 10, 2017 at 1:16 pm
The majority of Irish women of childbearing age are fed up with the moral hypocrisy of the government and the Catholic church. It has never been about the care and concern for women or children. The latest revelation from the Bon Secour home in Tuam, where over 800 bodies of children were found in an unused septic field, make this hypocrisy even more evident. From the early 20th century, the two “venerable” institutions worked tirelessly to render women’s sexuality a public affair. The public protests of thousands in Dublin, on Wednesday, illustrated the power of these young folks to voice their demands against the moral hypocrites in the church and state. More power to them all.
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March 10, 2017 at 7:13 pm
I understand this one better, Mary. The state now over there is separating itself from the Church. It’s like the Crucifixion — God stands almost alone.
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March 11, 2017 at 6:22 am
Not entirely true. The majority of the schools are run by Catholics for the government with guidelines for separating education from religious instruction. And while many Irish no longer attend any church and while many co-habitating, consenting adults are choosing not to have children, when they do have children, they usually have them baptised. In other words, as I’ve witnessed and learned from living here in Dublin, God is present in the lives of Irish folks. They’ve not turned their back on God. But they have turned their back on the organised crime of the Catholic Church for good reasons.
It’s understandable really because the many crimes against humanity, the Church’s sexual perversion and moral hypocrisy, reveal one of the most corrupt and longest-lasting evil in the history of human civilization.
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March 11, 2017 at 11:04 am
Now this one is really clear, and I like it.
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March 11, 2017 at 12:02 pm
Today’s Irish Times and Irish Independent shed more light on Ireland’s treatment of women and their infants/toddlers. From different venues and from Ireland and the EU, more people are coming forth to denounce the government, the Catholic church, Irish society, the families who disowned the young women who became pregnant out of wedlock and the men who never assumed responsibility for their part in the pregnancy.
It was then, and is now, a tragically painful era lasting well over eight decades that illustrates the depth to which men and women would stoop to shame and harm another group of humans. Worse, by my estimates, are those within the church–priests and nuns, who failed to show compassion in word and deed. But, the blame cannot fall onto them alone. The whole Irish society was like any other society, that simultaneously believed in the power of the state and feared offending those in authority, even if it meant harming your own family or your own neighbours. They forced women and their children into horrible living conditions, from which many, women and children, did not survive. One comment from today’s news caught my attention. The author essentially said that the Catholic Church in Ireland believed in abortion—only their way was to let the child die a slow death from malnutrition and neglect, as God’s will.
I’m sure the discussions about all this will continue in the papers and in the pubs.
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