Eurythmics – Love Is A Stranger – YouTube.

Founder of Youth Defence.

One of the many things done to ‘silence’ women.

A very interesting overview of one of the most active campaigners against social reform in this country.

Last Tuesday I attended an meeting which was an open discussion on the Prochoice movement and hosted by
RAG in Seomra Spraoi .

The meeting was called having seen the rise in the reaction of people to the posters Youth Defence had paid to have put in on billboards, and on public transport. The facebook page Unlike Youth Defence, I trust women to decide their lives for themselves. had gathered over a 1,000 likes and with the protest being planned for the next day, it seem that the posters have had a galvanising on people who consider themselves pro-choice.

Many of those who are shocked at the posters and tactics being used are young men and women, who were only kids or not even born when we had the 1994 abortion referendum in this country and are looking for away to have their voice heard.

The pro choice position has never had the same united front or rallying point as the pro life position,
never ran the same rallys, workshops and passed on how to campaign; the meeting was I think a starting point for that to change.

The meeting was posted in a invite only event on FB and a friend of mine who was invited, invited me a few hours before the meeting was due to kick off. It’s been a long time from when I was last in a room of a group of people who were pro choice and coming together to talk about that topic. It’s easily been 16 years and back then it was a WRAC meeting of mostly Women’s Rights Officers hosted in what was the USI offices off Aston quay.

In total there were over 40 people at the meeting, only 10 of them were men, the demographic was mostly young women in their 20s, which was good to see. Some were there as members of groups,
RAG, ActiononX, Lashback, Choice Ireland, UCD ProChoice, TCD Gender Equality, WSM, Grrrl Germs, Rabble, All Ireland Rally for Choice and Unlike Youth Defence, I trust women to decide their lives for themselves (linkspam for all these groups will be at the end of the post) and several people who are not party of any group but who want to take part in making sure pro choice voices are heard.

It was wonderful to be in a room with so many people who are passionate about a woman’s right to choose and who are or who are becoming activists. Out of the discussions there was the clear need to do something to counteract the pressure which pro life groups are putting one people and the government in the run up to the expert group which was set up to look at how legislation can be put in place 20 years after the X case.

There were also biscuits.

It is wonderful to the enthusiasm and the drive to get actions started. The internet gives a level of communication and connectedness which pro choice people didn’t have back in 1992. A way to get the work out and to rally people.

The demo which happened the next day out side Lenister house was due to just two young women who decided that ‘something’ had to be done and used the resources they had available at their finger tips, to bring people together. Their willingness to stand up and to take the time to make posters resulted in over 300 prochoice people protesting. I have never been in or seen such a large gathering of pro choice people in Ireland, it was refreshing.

Most of the people I know are pro choice, but quietly so, they don’t feel the need to bang a drum about it or else they are aware that, there are people who will call them baby murders and cause a scene. Which is one of the tactics pro life groups have used in the past. Just as the taboo about abortion has to be broken, so has the taboo about being pro choice.

If you are prochoice and want to become actively involved in some of the actions demos which are going to be happening between now and the 28th September (international abortion rights day) then keep an eye on the newly formed Irish Choice Network’s pages.

https://www.facebook.com/IrishChoiceNetwork
https://twitter.com/IrishChoiceNet
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/103499200601550354933/

The Irish Choice Network was one of the things which came out of the meeting, the aim of it is to connect pro choice groups and people across the country. Want to get a group of people together to plan an action or if you have something planned and want more people to know about it and take part, then that is what the Irish Choice Network is for. I for one am looking forward to what Ireland’s pro choice movement will do next.

Link SPam.

RAG : https://www.facebook.com/ragdublin http://ragdublin.blogspot.ie/
ActiononX: https://www.facebook.com/actiononx2012
Lashback: http://www.myspace.com/lashbackdublin
Choice Ireland: http://www.choiceireland.org/
UCD ProChoice: https://www.facebook.com/pages/UCD-Pro-Choice-Society/119514614775123
TCD Gender Equality: http://www.trinitysocieties.ie/society/47/gender-equality-society
WSM,
Grrrl Germs: https://www.facebook.com/GrrrlGerms
Rabble: http://rabble.ie/
All Ireland Rally for Choice: https://www.facebook.com/IrelandForChoice
Unlike Youth Defence, I trust women to decide their lives for themselves : https://www.facebook.com/notalwaysabetteroption

Abortion and the cash crux.

A British-based group is assisting Irishwomen in need of material help who are travelling for abortions in the UK, writes CAROL RYAN

‘THERE IS this belief that if you make abortion against the law you stop abortion, but you don’t. All you do is you make it inconvenient for women and couples that have financial resources and you make it desperate for women and couples who don’t.”

American mother-of-one Mara Clarke is the founder of Abortion Support Network (ASN), a London-based organisation that offers finance and accommodation to Irish women travelling to the UK for an abortion.

ASN was set up in 2009, inheriting the work of a grassroots network called the Irish Women’s Abortion Support Group that operated in the early 1980s. She is scathing about the burden that Ireland’s abortion laws put on women with little or no money. The cost of an abortion in the UK, before factoring in travel and accommodation costs, varies from €400 to €1,600, depending on how far along the woman is in her pregnancy. “We are here to bring a little bit of equality to abortion access. Women with money have options . . . we help the women who the only thing standing between them and ending an unplanned pregnancy is money.”

Eve (not her real name) had a crisis pregnancy last October and contacted ASN seeking their help to cover part of the cost of an abortion. After receiving money, she travelled to a clinic in Liverpool in November. “Irish women have to worry about the cost of flights; if you have to stay overnight you need to pay for accommodation, the cost of the procedure, and if you have children already you have to worry who is going to mind them for the day. It makes things much harder . . . I had to borrow from a moneylender with a ridiculous amount of interest,” she says.

ASN says it gave money in June to a couple who already had a large family and were facing an unplanned pregnancy. They explained that under normal circumstances they would have continued with the pregnancy, but decided to have an abortion because they were undergoing financial hardship since the husband had lost his job.

Another young couple who recently contacted the network had been trying to raise money for an abortion for months. By the time they had saved enough they found they had been pushed into the next price bracket, and the woman was almost at the legal limit of 24 weeks.

ASN’s “abortion fund” is, unsurprisingly, controversial. Unlike in the US where hundreds of similar networks have been set up to give women without health insurance access to safe abortion, ASN is the only fund of its kind in Europe, and the only network offering help specifically to Irishwomen. Online comments about it range from claims it “encourages the damaging of families, the killing of children, [and] encourages young people to engage in casual sex”, to praise for the work of a “fantastic organisation”.

Asked to comment on the work of ASN, spokesperson for The Life Institute Niamh Ui Bhriain said: “It is sad that if people are going to put time and money into a crisis pregnancy situation that they wouldn’t try to protect both human lives involved. I wouldn’t like to think [ASN] put ideological beliefs ahead of what is best for women in these situations, or that to them the right to have an abortion is more important than what is right for the woman involved.”

She says there are anti-abortion groups offering practical help to women facing unplanned pregnancies. “People need to know that there are organisations like Life and Freya Care who will help women to have their babies. [Freya Care] recently counselled a woman who didn’t have any money and was very panicked, very fearful. Phone calls were made and one woman in the midlands who runs a baby shop sent up a brand new cot. Other people sent money or baby clothes and she got through it. That kind of thing happens a lot under the radar but it doesn’t get commented on.”

Demand for ASN’s service now outstrips the amount of money they have to give. Figures released by the Department of Health in Britain show the number of Irish women travelling to the UK for abortions has fallen for the 10th year in a row from a peak of 6,673 in 2001 to 4,149 in 2011. However, calls to ASN have tripled since 2009, perhaps due to financial pressures caused by the recession. “We constantly hear ‘unemployed’, ‘recession’, ‘benefits’ and ‘can’t find work’,” says Clarke. “In our first year we were hearing from five women a month, in our second year we were hearing from 17 and in our third year we are averaging 28 to 30 women a month.”

ASN is a registered charity and relies on public donations which come in from individuals in Ireland, England, Sweden, Germany, America, Canada, France and Mexico. Thirty volunteers are involved in running the network. They act as hosts, putting women up in their homes when they come over for an abortion, and they also work shifts answering calls on the organisation’s helpline.

Gillian Ni Cheallaigh is one of two Irish women volunteering with the network. She had an abortion in 1995 while a student and says that while it was the right decision, having to travel to Britain made the experience “more traumatic than it needed to be”. She has lived in the UK for several years and got involved with the network when it was set up in 2009.

“I felt this was a practical way to offer support. I know Irish society and how difficult it can be for anyone to talk about abortion . . . I thought that I could offer a balance to that. I feel very strongly that it is only when Irish women who have had abortions start speaking out and naming themselves that there is any hope of Irish society realising that abortion is something that happens to women they know all the time.”

If you want to donate to the Abortion Support Network this is how: http://www.abortionsupport.org.uk/support-us/donate/

Some of my photos from the Anti YD Pro choice Demo.

Last Tuesday I attended an meeting which was an open discussion on the Prochoice movement and hosted by
RAG in Seomra Spraoi .

The meeting was called having seen the rise in the reaction of people to the posters Youth Defence had paid to have put in on billboards, and on public transport. The facebook page Unlike Youth Defence, I trust women to decide their lives for themselves. had gathered over a 1,000 likes and with the protest being planned for the next day, it seem that the posters have had a galvanising on people who consider themselves pro-choice.

Many of those who are shocked at the posters and tactics being used are young men and women who were only kids or not even born when we had the 1992 abortion referendum in this country and are looking for away to have their voice heard.

The pro choice position has never had the same united front or rallying point as the pro life position,
never ran the same rallys and workshop and passed on how to campaign the meeting was I think a starting point for that to change.

The meeting was posted in a invite only event on FB and a friend of mine who was invited, invited me a few hours before the meeting was due to kick off. It’s been a long time from when I was last in a room of a group of people who were pro choice and coming together to talk about that topic. It’s easily been 16 years and back then it was a WRAC meeting of mostly Women’s Rights Officers hosted in what was the USI offices off Aston quay.

In total there were over 40 people at the meeting, only 10 of them were men, the demographic was mostly young women in their 20s, which was good to see. Some were there as members of groups,
RAG, ActiononX, Lashback, Choice Ireland, UCD ProChoice, TCD Gender Equality, WSM, Grrrl Germs, Rabble, All Ireland Rally for Choice and Unlike Youth Defence, I trust women to decide their lives for themselves (linkspam for all these groups will be at the end of the post) and several people who are not party of any group but who want to take part in making sure pro choice voices are heard.

It was wonderful to be in a room with so many people who are passionate about a woman’s right to choose and who are or who are becoming activists. Out of the discussions there was the clear need to do something to counteract the pressure which pro life groups are putting one people and the government in the run up to the expert group which was set up to look at how legislation can be put in place 20 years after the X case.

There were also biscuits.

It is wonderful to the enthusiasm and the drive to get actions started. The internet gives a level of communication and connectedness which pro choice people didn’t have back in 1992. A way to get the work out and to rally people.

The demo which happened the next day out side Lenister house was due to just two young women who decided that ‘something’ had to be done and used the resources they had available at their finger tips, to bring people together. Their willingness to stand up and to take the time to make posters resulted in over 300 prochoice people protesting. I have never been in or seen such a large gathering of pro choice people in Ireland, it was refreshing.

Most of the people I know are pro choice, but quietly so, they don’t feel the need to bang a drum about it or else they are aware that, there are people who will call them baby murders and cause a scene. Which is one of the tactics pro life groups have used in the past. Just as the taboo about abortion has to be broken, so has the taboo about being pro choice.

If you are prochoice and want to become actively involved in some of the actions demos which are going to be happening between now and the 28th September (international abortion rights day) then keep an eye on the newly formed Irish Abortion Network’s pages.

https://www.facebook.com/IrishChoiceNetwork
https://twitter.com/IrishChoiceNet
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/103499200601550354933/

The Irish Choice Network was one of the things which came out of the meeting, the aim of it is to connect pro choice groups and people across the country. Want to get a group of people together to plan an action or if you have something planned and want more people to know about it and take part, then that is what the Irish Choice Network is for. I for one am looking forward to what Ireland’s pro choice movement will do next.

Link SPam.

RAG : https://www.facebook.com/ragdublin http://ragdublin.blogspot.ie/
ActiononX: https://www.facebook.com/actiononx2012
Lashback: http://www.myspace.com/lashbackdublin
Choice Ireland: http://www.choiceireland.org/
UCD ProChoice: https://www.facebook.com/pages/UCD-Pro-Choice-Society/119514614775123
TCD Gender Equality: http://www.trinitysocieties.ie/society/47/gender-equality-society
WSM,
Grrrl Germs: https://www.facebook.com/GrrrlGerms
Rabble: http://rabble.ie/
All Ireland Rally for Choice: https://www.facebook.com/IrelandForChoice
Unlike Youth Defence, I trust women to decide their lives for themselves : https://www.facebook.com/notalwaysabetteroption

Yes it has been a long while for when I last posted, life has been busy and I find myself more and more using google +. I won’t be forsaking this place but I am considering splitting it up into different topics instead of it being such a grab bag of topics.