In early March of this year, thousands of women went on strike in towns and cities across Northern Ireland and the Republic to protest the countries' abortion bans, as part of a day of action organized to coincide with International Women's Day.
Women wore all black and were encouraged to take the day off work as well as refraining from performing emotional labor, unpaid gendered expectations placed on women.
The largest march was held in Dublin, where protesters blocked off O'Connell Bridge, bearing banners urging legal reform and chanting. Coalitions representing Irish artists, midwives, trade unions and students unions were among those who marched in the strike.
Outside Leinster house, anti-abortion protesters confronted them.
Ruth Coppinger, a member of the Irish parliament for the Anti-Austerity Alliance, addressed the crowds to call for urgent reform of the laws. She later said: "It's been a hugely important day. It was very important and necessary that young people in particular turned out.
"This is a new generation, they're not going to be told to wait and the whole concept of bodily autonomy for young people is very different even from my generation. The Church doesn't have power."
Danielle Roberts, from the Belfast Feminist Network which also marched in the rally to represent Northern Ireland, stated: "Reproductive rights are human rights and without bodily autonomy nobody can really be free.
On the heels of this protest (at the end of March), Nils Muiznieks, Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner, stated that Ireland must loosen its strict abortion laws and replace them with a regime more respectful to women's rights.
Laws against abortion in once stridently Catholic Ireland are among the world's most protective, but a referendum on widening access to abortion could be held if a citizens' assembly set up by government recommends it in a decision expected next month.
At present, abortions are allowed only if a mother's life is in danger, after a total ban was lifted in 2013, a provision Muiznieks said still has a "chilling" effect on doctors who must decide who meets restrictive requirements.
"Culturally, politically, socially, Ireland has changed significantly and I think that is not reflected in the current regime," he said.
Mr. Muiznieks joined the United Nations Human Rights Committee in recommending that at a very minimum, the Irish government should decriminalize abortion and widen the law to allow for abortion in cases of fatal fetal abnormality, rape or incest.
Of course, it is only a matter of time before abortion on demand becomes the law of the land in Ireland as it has in most of the civilized nations of the world.
The reason?
Because, as Ms. Coppinger has rightly noted, “the Church doesn't have power” any longer. The Church has no practical influence over the attitudes and culture of the Irish people.
Irish Bishops have been relentless in their condemnation of abortion, yet to no apparent avail as the movement to legitimize this murderous procedure continues to spread throughout the country.
And so, in short order I predict, Ireland will join those nations of the world where the right to life is no longer considered an inalienable right stemming from the laws of Nature and its Creator, but rather a privilege granted by the State.
Pope Paul VI, of happy memory, warned about the "culture of death" which would spread throughout the world as abortion was legalized and became an acceptable form of population control.
How prophetic the Holy Father truly was!
How sad, and remarkable. that we continue to fail to heed his wise counsel!
No comments:
Post a Comment