Savita Halappanavar

I am not normally an over-emotional person, in fact I am often good naturedly accused of being somewhat emotionally stunted. I lack the understanding of what makes someone grieve about someone they don't know, celebrity deaths barely get a blink from me. However yesterday I couldn't update this blog. Yesterday I was shaking with rage and unable to type, yesterday I was on the verge of tears for a woman I never met and yesterday I was NEVER so ashamed to be Irish.
Yesterday I found out that a 31 year old woman, Savita Halappanavar, had died because of my country's archaic laws. The laws that should have been signed into legislation over twenty years ago.

The pro-life response was predictable as usual. Accusations of the pro-choice side "exploiting the tragedy" and using Savita's death as a "political football". While we're on that there was no mention of the horrific images used by the likes of Youth Defence and their ilk. There was no mention of their using images of miscarriages and parading them as pictures of abortion. There was no mention of the vigils for the baby in the X-case (despite that baby being miscarried and not aborted), no mention of the Youth Defence member who 'wistfully sighed' "He could have been my husband". Well here's some news Savita WAS somebody's wife, no 'could have' about it, she WAS Paveen's wife, she WAS somebody's daughter, she WAS a living, breathing human being with a myriad of interests and hopes and dreams. She was a Hindu living in Ireland who was told that "we are a Catholic country". We ARE NOT a Catholic country, countries don't have a religion - people do. Ireland is, or at least is supposed to be, a republic. A republic that is supposed to serve the needs of all it's people regardless of their creed, colour, sexual orientation or anything else. A republic whose hospital service should give the optimum care to everybody regardless. Alas it appears we are a republic in name only, Ireland does not serve or care about the health of its women. Ireland is a country that prioritises an already miscarrying foetus over the life of its mother. Savita and her family have paid the price for this.

Many times we have been told that there is no such thing as a life-saving abortion. Many times people have stood up and protested and said there was and is a clear need to legislate. Many times people protested that the lack of legislation could cost women their lives and still that old lie was the governments response. Last April the Medical Treatment Bill 2012 was tabled before the Dáil. A Bill that may have gone some of the way of preventing a death like this. ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN TDs voted against this Bill, including the three from my own constituency. In my constituency Labour TD Jack Wall, Fine Gael TD Martin Heydon and Fianna Fáil TD Sean O' Fearghail voted against that Bill. One of those TDs consistently received my number 1 vote in every election but NEVER AGAIN. Never again in my lifetime will any of those TDs ever get my vote. Through the National Women's Council of Ireland I contacted those TDs a short while ago asking them to prioritise legislating to protect women’s lives in line with the judgement of the Supreme Court in the X case and the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the A, B and C v Ireland case.

NOT ONE OF THEM RESPONDED

Then the news broke the night before last. The news broke of the needless death of a young woman. A death caused by the political cowardice of the TDs in my constituency and their national counterparts.

The time has come for change. The time has come for this government to stand up and do their job after more than twenty long years. The time has come for the so called democratic government of the so called republic of Ireland to do their duty and legislate for what the people voted for in several referenda. The time has come for no more shame and no more deaths. If the government can't do their job then they need to leave - NOW.

There was a protest vigil for Savita outside Dáil Eireann last night and there will be another vigil this Saturday 17th November at 4pm beginning in the Garden of Remembrance and going to the Dáil again.

We need to ensure that this never happens again.

Rest in Peace Savita Halappanavar

The whole world is watching us.

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Gender divides in the abortion debate

Last week in the course of one day alone I heard/read five different people use variants of the phrase "women/girls/sluts should keep their legs closed" in terms of the abortion debate. The phrase on its own makes my skin crawl in terms of its misogynism. It's reminiscent of the Madonna/whore complex. It implies that like the Biblical Eve before us we are solely responsible for the morals (or lack thereof) in the world, that men are unable to resist such temptresses and for abortion to end we just need to accept the child or not wanting a child to simply "keep our legs closed". Interestingly not once in the abortion debate have I ever heard someone suggest á la Twink that men should "zip up their mickeys". The other thing that use of such phrases indicates to me that the people who use them are not just anti-abortion they are also anti-sex for any reason other than procreation but that's a post for another day.

It stoked my curiosity though. Three out of the five people on that day were women and it got me to wondering about the gender of people who support either side of the debate and why. Discussing it with himself over a bottle of wine one night he says "it's a pity that we have no way of knowing". The great thing about being involved in different groups is that I now have an arsenal of people who have very particular sets of skills; skills they have acquired over a very long careers, skills that make them...(ahem, sorry got a bit carried away there). One such skilful person is Geoff @geoffsshorts, Geoff, over the course of knowing him vaguely on the net, has always impressed me with his ability to pull up stats on most things possible so I politely tweeted and asked could he run up data for me on this issue. He kindly complied and sent his findings to me and told me to run the commentary on my own blog...so no pressure on me at all then :)

What the data showed on Youth Defence is that the gender divide is pretty much 50/50, based on the first name of followers:

This wasn't overly surprising, after all pro-life seems to be a sort of 'default' position to hold. Many people find the idea of abortion abhorrent until they do more research. Many teenagers, including me when I was younger, hold pro-life views. Mainly because at that stage life comes in black and white and it's not until later that we discover the myriad of reasons why it is acceptable to hold a pro-choice view. I know myself on encountering Youth Defence at the tender age of thirteen signed up because "killing babies is bad mmmkay" until I went home and my mother explained to me that it wasn't that simple and told me to write them a letter retracting my interest in their group. Youth Defence target this angle through the photos and billboards they put up - who doesn't find them horrific? And they are horrific but they do not represent the reality of abortion.

The data on Choice Ireland shows a majority female interest, based on the first name of followers: 

I don't know for definite why this is. We are told time after time that abortion is not just a "woman's issue" and that the man should have a choice too. Something I whole heartedly agree with but I doubt there are many women seeking termination without at least discussing it with their partners. I know many of my male friends are pro-choice yet have never expressed interest in joining any of these groups. Himself even is pro-choice but hasn't signed up to support any pro-choice group and yet I have signed up to many. I discussed it with him last night and we came to the conclusion that choice is a topic where a lot of men can comfortably sit on the fence about. Most men will support their partners if they choose a termination but in reality the physical buck stops with the woman. However for women living in Ireland the choice is to keep the baby or travel to a different country in order to have a termination. So the women of Ireland can't afford to sit on the fence and therefore have a vested interest in supporting pro-choice groups in our own country.

Once again many thanks to Geoff who you can find here @geoffsshorts and here geoffsshorts.blogspot.ie/

Pro-choice, anti-choice and misinformation!

So tomorrow I (and a hoopload of others) will be Marching for Choice! I'm also Marching for Democracy. It's been twenty years since the X-case, Twenty years and three referendums that supported a woman's right to a termination in the case of her life being at risk or in the case that the baby was incompatible with life, twenty years, three referendum and twelve women a day who must go abroad to seek an abortion. Three referendum that successive governments in their cowardice refused to legislate for. It is an infringement on the rights of the woman and an infringement on democracy. Three times this issue has gone to the polls and three times the government in power has refused to listen to the voice of the people.

Twenty years and more of woman shaming

I want to state here and now that I have NO problem with people who are against abortion. Zero! Zilch! That is your opinion and your choice to make. However I have a HUGE problem with the amount of misinformation that floods out from the 'pro-life side'. I state 'pro-life' in commas because it infers that anyone on the pro-choice side is pro-death or anti-life. That's not true. Some of the main proponents of the 'pro-life' side seem to think that every pro-choice person wants every pregnant woman to have an abortion. There have even been encounters which go to the tune of:

Pro-life: What if your mother had been pro-choice?

Pro-choice: She is, she chose to have me.

But that's a minor point. Some of the gravest misinformation was on our streets recently by Youth Defence. The infamous billboards and leaflets claiming that there was always a better option. 

SOMETIMES THERE'S NOT

Questions were asked of these claims. What if it's a case of rape? Like the X-Case, what if it's a case of rape of a 12 year old girl?

'Pro-Life's answer is that the girl should carry to term no matter what and if she really doesn't want the baby, to put him/her up for adoption. Whatever about a woman's right to choose, no child should ever be forced to give birth. Let me give you some statistics on this: pregnancy is a risky business anyway but girls under the age of 15 are FIVE times more likely to die in pregnancy than women in their twenties. Babies are 60% more likely to die if their mother is under 18. 

Source: http://www.who.int/pmnch/media/news/2012/20120626_stc_teen_pregnancy_report/en/index.html.

Not to mention external effects such as the girl having to take a year out of her education, societal implications and the speculation and gossip that would inevitably follow such a situation.

The other accusations of some 'pro-life' groups that abortion is the tearing out of a fully formed foetus kicking and screaming from a mother's womb. Youth Defence posters are full of this. Most of their posters consist of either almost fully formed foetuses or miscarriages NOT abortions. A zygote and a blastocyst are less than 2.5 inches. Find yourself a ruler and measure it. Another stunt by 'pro-life' groups is that they want to film abortions happening to put others off. Abortions that occur in the first nine weeks (as most abortions do) would make for pretty boring filming. 

An abortion before nine weeks consists of a
woman taking a tablet and having a heavy period.

Most Irish women are not in the nine-week mark due to arranging time off work and travel etc.

This is what an abortion after 9 weeks looks like.

Late term abortions are few and far between. In countries like the UK it's not possible to have a late term abortion unless the mother's life is at risk or the baby is not viable. But it is possible. And women that need them can get them. Unlike the women of Ireland whose country has turned it's back on them and decided to sweep them under the carpet. Women who have a late term abortion only do so under dire circumstances and we certainly owe them and all other women more than shame.

Which brings me to my last point. A lot of 'pro-life' groups are about the shaming of women. Not trusting a woman to make her own decisions over her own body. And it hearkens back to a time not so long ago when girls or women who find themselves pregnant out of wedlock were 'sent to care for a sick relative' or even worse sent to a Magdalene Laundry.

It's 2012 Ireland - we owe those 12 women a day, those 5,000 women a year, those 100,000 women since the X-Case more dignity than to be swept under the carpet like a dirty secret of the state.

Join us tomorrow at the Spire at 2pm and March for Choice!