All-Ireland Abortion Rights - It's Time To Break The Barriers!
Éirígí For a New Republic activists joined the March For Choice last Saturday (September 25th) in Dublin. The event focused on the need to break the remaining barriers that still deny many women in Ireland access to free, safe, legal and local abortion services.
Conscientious objection opt-outs mean that only half of the maternity hospitals, and a small percentage of GPs in the Twenty-Six Counties are actually providing abortion services. As a result hundreds of thousands of women across the Twenty-Six Counties are denied access to local abortion services. This phenomenon is most pronounced in rural areas away from large population centres.
The lack of Safe Access Zones around maternity hospitals and other healthcare facilities means women regularly have to run the gauntlet of anti-choice protesters to attend their medical appointments.
Éirígí activists outside Leinster House at the March For Choice on Saturday
In addition, mandatory waiting periods, the lack of access to surgical abortions and other factors have left many women still unable to access this vital medical service, three years after the removal of the archaic Eighth Amendment.
In the Six Counties, conservative, reactionary forces have tried their utmost to deny bodily autonomy to women. The British 1967 Abortion Act was extended to the North in 2019. However, the Stormont government - driven by the misogynistic DUP - have blocked the implementation of this legislation.
Pending the reintegration of the national territory Éirígí is calling on the Dublin and London governments to ensure that all Irish women are provided with access to abortion services that are truly local and safe.
The fight for abortion rights won’t be won until every woman in Ireland has access to abortions services that are free, safe, legal, local - and free of intimidation. Until that day comes our activists will be on the streets standing with the women of Ireland.