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The Wanton Witch

The Dancer and the Dance

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The Dancer and the Dance.

The music pulses, thumps, bounces and beats,
Over it the sound of laughter and the slapping of feet.
Primal, Tribal, harking back to the dawn of man,
Beyond even Adam that delved and Eve that span.

Joy of expression, freedom of movement
Body writhing, wriggling and bent,
Flung out as if flying; then tight as a ball.
All at once she seems to run, slighter and crawl.

Trailing tresses, that have never been cut,
She squeezes her eyes tight shut,
Twisting, twirling, holding on to nought
She circles east, then south, then west, then north

Round and round and round and round
Gathering first speed and then sound
Till she slips and falls unto the ground
She places a hand to her head and does Pronounce
“ Mama, I fell and got an Ouch “

The Wanton Witch

Wise words

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Your spirituality should be what’s right for you your politics should be what’s right for everyone.

Words like that are why I try and make the effort to attend my local pagan gatherings.
In the sharing and discussions I will always come away with food for though and something which rings true.

This month this wonderful Utterance was by George Harmon who runs
www.witches-attic.com “A quality craft / bookshop covering all areas of Paganism, Occult & Esoteric practice”

Activism and Agitation

Snake Dreams

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The wake of the new year brought with it bouts of insomnia and then finally as the skies were graced with the first new moon of the year my sleeping pattern settled down and I began to have Snake dreams.

It’s not the first time I’ve had snake dreams, the last time was in the run up to my Saturn’s return and boy did my life get interesting. That time it was more to do with Kundalini energies and swallowing snakes.

This time I was having dreams of shedding my skin and being more ‘me’ afterwards and
my colours and attributes being clearer. The snake is said to be a symbol of transformation and healing, and well the two weeks after the dreams started have certainly started down that path.

Oddly enough this Chinese new year, which is the 10th of febuary, is that of the Snake, so maybe this will be a year of transformation and healing for me.
I also found this under my bed when I was tidying.

It was a present from a friend long ago and I think I will keep him on my desk to remind me to keep active and doing the things I need to over the year to come.

Activism and Agitation

My Abortion Activism

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My abortion activism goes back about two decades at this stage, I used to write the Women’s Information Network’s illegal abortion information phone number 01 6794700 on the blackboards of the 6th year classrooms early in the mornings before anyone else was in.

Needless to say this caused uproar in the convent school I attended: when teachers and the head nun had an inkling it was me I was told to present myself at the office when I arrived each morning. They were going to use the absence of the number to prove it was me and someone else started chalking it on the black boards and it started to appear on the cubicle walls in the toilets in the school.

This was back before the 1992 referendum which made information related to abortion legal. I grew up in an Ireland were magazines were censored and so were UK phone books all over the country, long before it was possible to look up information on the internet. I have been pro choice having seen what family members went through in an Ireland which didn’t talk about miscarriage and treated unmarried mothers badly.

Even after the 1992 while information wasn’t censored, only drs and counselors were to give information to women who were looking for it and that is still the case to day. Before anyone could google B.P.A.S. and get information giving information verbally or a booklet or a photocopy could get you into legal hot water.

When I went to college I got even more involved in pro choice activism, I continued to act as an information point for women*. I had gotten my hands on a bunch of booklets “Traveling to Liverpool: a guide for Irish women” which were produced in 1994 and some activist training and would use them to help women, from teenagers to women in their 40s who didn’t know were to go, were too far away from the I.F.P.A. clinics and so would try their luck with the local college.

This was often a risky adventure, there were those in the college esp the college nurse who opposed me doing this, she was involved with the local Cura Branch and I had heard of other people who were giving out information that they would try and record me. If I wasn’t sure I would arrange to meet people and then accidentally leave behind pages with info on them after saying I could not help.

I also traveled with women over the years and if I didn’t travel with them checked in with them after wards, to make sure they took it easy, so many students who lived away from home during the week would travel and come back to digs or rented house and needed someone to make them tea and listen.

I remember the name of every person I helped back then and when they traveled and some for years later I would get a card or mostly an email to the address I had back then to say thank you or just to have someone who knew to communicate with. So many women edit out that time in their life from their narrative. They box it off don’t think about it, don’t talk about it ever, to anyone and go on to have partners and start families and it’s never mentioned. Not even when dealing with medical professionals in maternity hospitals.

Even after college it didn’t stop, I left an email address with certain people and they would refer people on but soon it was possible to search for information on the internet, but I still ended up being a point of contact and information and the same when I got involved in online communities, way before even bebo. Even in those places when I would talk about the topic in general women would contact me privately to share their stories.

My abortion activism has always been part of my sex education, contraception and Choice activism. I have passed on information on adoption and supports for being a single parent as well over the years but when there were so few places to get abortion information and support most of my first contact encounters over the year have been about abortion.

So many women over the years have shared their stories with me, easily close to 100,
but they would only be `not even .1 % of the 150,000 Irish women we have stats on who have traveled to the UK.

These days there is more information and support but hopefully the day will come when we don’t have to travel.

* I use the term women in my post not to be exclusionary, but as I have not yet knowingly had a transman talk to me about their story or approach me for information.

Helpful links if you need them.

www.ifpa.ie
www.positiveoptions.ie
www.bpas.ie
www.mariestopes.org.uk
www.abortionsupport.org.uk

Activism and Agitation

Blog for Choice day: I had an abortion.

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Today is Blog for Choice day, and people all over the world will be writing blogs to as the site puts it “gets more people reading and talking about reproductive rights” I know that is what this entire wordpress site of late has been about.

So really it’s not surprising that I got involved last year with the new level of activism about abortion in Ireland. It’s been online engagement, writing, meetings, plans, demos and marches. I was at the meeting which saw the naming of the new Abortion Rights Campaign. I have been a small part of the process of making that happen and will be involved.

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I was there with about 150 other people all of whom are pro choice and listened to the speakers and contributors. We heard about how the Aviva stadium holds 50,000 people and 3 times that number of women have traveled to the UK for abortions. We heard about that for everyone of us who have stood outside the Dáil protesting there are 1,000s of silent women and some thing inside me snapped.

Before abortion was legalised in France and Germany 100s of women came out together and said “I had an abortion.”

I think we need Irish women to do that, but I would never ask someone to do something that I would not myself.
So I addressed the meeting and asked to speak as a woman who has had an abortion. Stated that I was happy the campaign was to use the word abortion and that we need to break the taboo, end the stigma and we need women to be able to say I had an abortion, and so I addressed them all and said “My name is [Sharrow] and I had an abortion and I only regret that I had to travel”. The response was nearly over whelming, but I kept it together and didn’t start sobbing. I quietly tweeted what I had done as I had been live tweeting that part of the day.

I had so many people say to me that day in person that I was very brave to do that.
Why should standing and saying I had an abortion in a room full of people who are pro choice, who are there to fight for abortion rights be brave?

It shouldn’t be.

I had people respond to me on twitter and by text message saying the same, all being supportive but time and again saying I was brave but I don’t think it was about being brave, it was and is about being fed up of being talked about as a statistic.

I am 1 of the 150,000 women who traveled to have an abortion.Each of us is a person with hopes, dreams and rights. I hope that more Irish women will be able to step forward and say ‘I had an abortion’.

Activism and Agitation

Abortion Training for Irish Doctors.

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A little while ago I wrote about Irish Abortion Providers and what type they may be and how “even with all the Drs we train in this country none of them are trained to carry the procedures needed.”

There has thankfully been some movement on this.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/doctors-offered-uk-abortion-training-219561.html

Doctors offered UK abortion training

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Two Irish medical students have applied for a course offering training in abortion care at a London clinic.

The one-week externships, at the largest London clinic of the British Pregnancy Advisory Services in Richmond, will allow students witness how abortion procedures are carried out.

According to Medical Students For Choice, which supports the BPAS programme, it gives students the opportunity to learn about aspects of women’s healthcare that are not part of routine medical training courses in Ireland.

“At the moment in Ireland, there is a lot of stuff they don’t go over [in medical education] such as how to do it [abortions] and the circumstances in which an abortion can be performed,” said MSFC member Amelia Reid. “A lot of medical students are scared about finding themselves in a situation where they need to know what to do to save a life.”

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A BPAS spokeswoman said the only criteria for taking part in the course was that the medical student had completed one year of medical school, had a basic medical knowledge, an understanding of confidentiality and ethics, and was able to explain in writing why they wanted to take part. She said they were not looking for students “at an advanced point in their studies”, although such students would not be excluded.

The spokeswoman said students would get a “complete overview” of the patient’s experience at the clinic, from pre-abortion counselling to choices for contraception afterwards.

She said BPAS opened the course to applicants in Irish medical schools after last year’s course — the first British course run by BPAS — attracted considerable attention from Ireland. As part of the course, students will also work with Antenatal Choices and Results, a charity that supports parents whose unborn baby is diagnosed with foetal anomaly.

Richard Lyus, who will mentor students on the BPAS scheme, said they were looking ahead “to a time when the law enables doctors in Ireland to provide abortion care to all women who need it”.

“We hope these placements will give Ireland’s next generation of doctors important insight into the needs of women in this situation, which they can make use of in the course of their careers,” said Dr Lyus.

Ms Reid said MSFC has a presence in all of the medical schools in Ireland, with the exception of University College Cork.

She said approximately 250 students in Ireland joined MSFC’s database since it set up here two years ago and that it hoped to provide financial assistance to Irish students accepted on the BPAS course. The educational aspect of the course is provided free of charge, courtesy of BPAS.

If you want to know more about Medical Students For Choice you can find them here:
http://www.msfc.ie/

And if you want to know more about Doctors For Choice you can find them here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Doctors-For-Choice-Ireland/522714117761585
https://twitter.com/Doctors4Choice