We are in the 4th decade of the struggle to get rid of the 8th amendment - no one under the age of 52 could even have voted for it.  But this year should be the year and that's why everyone should be on the March for Choice in Dublin, September 30th.

Every year in either Dublin or Belfast the pro and anti choice movements come head to head around the so called ‘Rally for Life’.  This year it was Dublin’s unwilling role to play host to the bigot parade.  It mattered more years than many as a referendum on the hated 8th Amendment that bans abortion is promised for next year.  It could be that the next Dublin bigot parade scheduled for 2019 will come after they have suffered a major defeat.

Andrew spent the day of March 8th 2017 recording #Strike4Repeal and has edited this 20 minute video account of how the day went down in Dublin.  Below you will also find a  text transcript of his account.

I headed into Dublin early on #Strike4Repeal day because a little birds had told me of the plan to cover up and alter some of Dublin’s statues in the early morning.

 The Irish Times has yet again made an entirely cynical intervention in its bid to force its agenda on the campaign to get rid of the hated 8th Amendment. This time in the form of an opinion poll constructed to reinforce the idea that abortion is a constitutional issue rather than a medical one.

This year Belfast saw its largest pro-choice demonstration when about a thousand people took to the streets for the Rally for Choice.  This was a significant achievement and to mark it we’ve put together this brief documentary featuring footage from the march, some of the speakers and interviews with both organisers and participants.

2nd February to mark St Bridget’s feastday performances were staged in public settings across Ireland and London renouncing Ireland's anti-abortion laws. St Bridget is one of four Irish saints who “are recorded as openly and miraculously carrying out abortions”, the feast day was the pre-Christian festival of Imbolg (meaning ‘in the belly’).

We recorded the event at Connolly station in Dublin, the performance as you’ll see in the video collectively confronts the themes of censorship, self censorship through art, action, performance, conversation and camradery. The location at Connolly is one of the transport hubs through which many of the 12 people who have to leave Ireland every day to access abortion in the UKL and beyond pass.
 

Dublin city centre came to a halt Saturday 26th September as thousands of people marched for choice and against Ireland's anti-women law that would jail people who access abortion here for up to 14 years.

The key demand is to Repeal the 8th Amendment which was passed at the height of clerical control back in 1983. So long ago that nobody who voted on it would now be in a position to even become pregnant. More that 2/3rd of the population want abortion to be decriminalised, only 25% want the current criminalisation to remain yet Enda Kenny has announced he has no intention of introducing a referendum to Repeal the 8th.

A large number of Garda made arrests towards the end of a pro-choice rally in Dublin this evening. Three pro-choice campaigners were arrested, at least one of them was pepper sprayed when they were already on the ground.

A couple of hundred people came to the pro choice solidarity rally in Dublin last night. It was called to protest against the prosecution of a women in Belfast for supplying her daughter with the abortion pill.

Banners reading Drop The Charges and Free Safe Legal Abortion had been prepared the previous evening for the protest which had been called by the Workers Solidarity Movement and (Re)al-Productive Health. There were speakers from both these organisations but also from the Abortion Rights Campaign and ROSA whose banners were also brought to the protest.

The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) revealed yesterday (16 Dec 2014) that over the last 12 months alone they have seen 26 asylum seekers or women with travel restrictions who indicated they wanted an abortion but were unable to travel abroad. At least 5 of those women were forced to continue the pregnancy to term.