Category Archives: Uncategorized
Rumbled! What life for women is really like
Maternityire
Death shows need for abortion services, family planning organisation says
“Mr Behan said the IFPA frequently had clients who experience difficulties raising the money to travel and to pay for an abortion and who had later-term abortions as a result.
“If they were resident in the UK and there was a serious health issue the abortion would be available to them, free of charge on the NHS.”
He said the case underlined the need for abortion legislation which protected the health and not just the life of a woman.
The National Women’s Council of Ireland too said the case “points to the needs for safe and legal abortion services in Ireland” and to the “artificial and unworkable distinction between a threat to the health and a threat to the life of the woman”.
“It also shows the devastating impact being forced to journey overseas has on women emotionally and physically,” said Jacqueline Healy, women’s health and human rights spokeswoman with the council said.”
It is estimated 12 women a day travel to the UK for abortions, I wonder how many don’t due to the cost. All other maternity related services in this country are free. Where a woman needs an abortion due to the impact the pregnancy is having on her health she should be able to have it here.
The abortion support network takes calls everyday from desperate women who can’t afford to travel who are trying to scrape together the money needed. One of the volunteers who answers those calls, wrote about some of thier stories here. http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-the-debates-on-abortion-in-the-dail-wont-change-the-reality-irish-women-face-every-day-993657-Jul2013/
Given the cost it is no wonder that women traveling from Ireland put their lives at risk to return as soon as possible and with the stigma many do not get the aftercare they need, esp if things don’t go as best they can.
Abortion after care, is free. Both the physical check up and counseling if women needed it.
http://www.abortionaftercare.ie/ lists services around Ireland which are funded by the HSE.
But beware some of these are how ever pro life, esp the Cura branches.
Personally I would recommended in Dublin http://femplus.ie/services/crisis-pregnancy/
Labour’s proposed abortion referendum: Not good enough
Bigger on the inside.
This, this is art and sharing and why I <3 her work so much and respect her as a person as well as an artist. This had me sobbing quietly and willing myself to stay to the end and listen, rather then fleeing to cry where no one could see me. As I did, those people around me who I am blessed to call my friends, gently touched me to let me know they were there, but not in a way which would make me falter.
When she was done I fled to the ladies and sobbed my guts out for 5 mins and then went back to sing and laugh and dance. The last two weeks for me have been wonderful, I have been happy, I have been content in my own skin, no panic attacks, I have been feeling in charge of me and my life. Twice I have felt awful, that flash which reminds me that I had not been that way for a long, long time.
I was enjoying myself on Thursday with abandon, no cloud to struggle against, no dampers on me mentally, emotionally, spiritually and then this was played.
I am bigger on the inside, other people see it, I haven't been able to.
But I know so many wonderful people, I got and gave amazing hugs to 50 people on Thursday alone.
The last two weeks have been so healing for me.
I am blessed and I know that I am bigger on the inside.
Micromachismo & Lapgate
So last night despite the fact I am on holidays I found myself camping out in front of the tv in the house we have rented for the week.
So I was up and watching when what is being called lapgate occurred.
Tom Barry FG had apologises for ‘horseplay’ with Aine Collins FG.
It is more then that is was an utter lack of respect for a fellow TD and party member, for the people they both represent and the country as whole as it happened in the Dáil voting chamber.
He would not have done it to a male T.D.
So the lead word in the title of this post is micromachismo which is defined thusly.
“micromachismo”, as defined by Bonino (psychiatric working on promoting equality between women and men ) :
For the author these are ” small, almost imperceptible controls and abuses of power quasi normalized that the males execute permanently. They are skilful arts of domain, maneuvers and strategies that, without being very notable, they restrict and force insidiously and repeatedly the personal power, the autonomy and the psychic balance of the women, committing an outrage in addition against the democratization of the relations. Given his invisibility they are exercised generally by total impunity ” (Bonino, 2004: 3).
Last night we watch aghast as a TD grabbed another TD with out their consent and restrained them while the Dáil was in the process of finally trying to pass a bill to legislate for the Supreme court ruling on the X case.
21 years after that 14 year old girl was raped, ended up pregnant and wanted to end her life rather then be pregnant, there are people some of whom are members of our government who think during the debating session that accosting a woman in her place of work is ‘horseplay’.
What it is is horseshit. I have had mixed feelings on the bill and was by turns encouraged and disappointed by the debate last night but Lapgate shows us how far we have to go still in this country in treating women as equals and respecting them.