8 reasons anarchists are voting Yes to Repeal the hated 8th

ireland / britain | gender | feature Friday May 25, 2018 19:44 by WSM - WSM

WSM position on May 25th Irish abortion referendum

WSM on the 2017 March for Choice in Dublin

On May 25th we in Ireland finally get to vote to Repeal the hated 8th amendment. Here we present the 8 reasons WSM members are voting Yes to Repeal along with many of the articles we have published on the issue in recent months.

WSM members are Voting YES to Repeal because;

1. The decision on whether to continue a pregnancy is one for the pregnant person to make. It is not a decision of the gang of busybodies that were & are against marriage equality, contraception, sex education, divorce and access to secular education.

2. There are people for whom travel to access abortion in Britain isn't an option or hasn't been in the past because of migration status, abusive relationships and poverty.  

3. Pregnant people have to illegally take abortion pills in Ireland. In doing so they face the fear that the pills will be intercepted in the post, alongside the fear of prosecution which could result in a 14 year jail sentence.

4.  The referendum is also about what sort of Ireland we want.  The No campaign wants to return us to an Ireland of the past where a woman’s place was the home providing reproductive labour.  Nothing was to interfere with this hence the bans on divorce, contraception, working while married etc. 

5. No one should have to suffer while they are waiting for their child to die inside them, not knowing if he or she is in pain or if that movement was normal or the last throes of death. (Testimony from a FFA parent who travelled).

6. Few of us were old enough to vote in 1983. Now we finally get to vote to get rid of something that has made life so much harder for so many of the women in our lives, including delaying or denying medical care to pregnant people.

7. The anti-choice groups are a gang of bullies who associate with the far right. They came after us with injunctions in the 1980s for distributing information and hurleys in 1992 for speaking out for choice.  We've watched them threaten, lie and assault people across four decades.

8. The so-called moral position for ‘pro-lifers’ is hypocrisy. They are using this struggle to force women to remain pregnant, regardless of their circumstances. These people have no interest in life. They don’t support the people in crisis pregnancy. They only offer judgement, shame and oppression.

Turn out and change Ireland with us on May 25th with your Yes vote.

Our activity for Repeal

Repeal has been our major activity since March with every member of WSM involved at some level.  We took the decision to direct almost all of this involvement through Together for Yes (T4Y) so you won't have seen WSM printed material, e.g. posters, and we are not doing our own public meetings, and so forth.  All that sort of work and help with organising tasks is instead being done as volunteers with Together for Yes, a range of work from organising local groups to packing merch in HQ to leafletting and canvassing, you'll find some reports from this work towards the end. 

It's not too late to get involved, in the Marriage Equality campaign the largest canvasses were in the closing days, volunteer to canvass with T4Y now and those already doing so will be delighted by fresh faces.  With less than 14 days to go the weekend saw huge canvass teams take to the streets with many first timers along and its expected they will continue to grow right up to the eve of the vote.

The exception to this is our online media.  This is because we have built up a huge reach with 100,000 followers across our various social media platforms.  We have been using our considerable online reach to amplify T4Y messaging.  It also allows us to say the things that T4Y as a broad campaign might have difficulty expressing, for example explaining that the referendum comes from an anti-establishment revolt that forced the politicans into calling it.

Our online campaign started on the 7th of March, the eve of International Womens' Day and between then and May 9th our own tweets appeared 1.7 million times on peoples feeds.  We probably added at least twice that, through retweeting, to T4Y reach as well as other campaign groups including Termination For Medical Reasons, Amnesty, MERJ etc.  

Our top Tweet was sent on March 20th, reaching 60,000, it warned about the dark ad campaigns that were coming and provided examples later used by journalists from The Times, C4 News and other publications in their coverage leading to the decision by Facebook & Google to ban online referendum advertising.  

The 2nd most popular Tweet was from March 11th where we proved that only 9,000 people had taken part in the 'Rally 4 Life' and not the 100,000 claimed by organisers.  This reached 51,000 and was important in establishing early on that claims from the No camp needed to be investigated rather than reported as fact, as much of the media were doing.

Both our facebook pages have been busy posting unique content written by our members about the referendum, some of which is now archived here on our website. Solidarity Times had 46,000 engagements last month alone, reaching 72,000 people in Ireland.  Our Workers Solidarity Movement page had 65,000 engagements over the last month. An engagment is a like, share or comment.  We've also been providing photography and video coverage, with video we have shot appearing in several Yes campaign related videos including this great version of Phil Och's When I'm Gone by Shift Work.

You can read a selection of those articles below. We are not running paid ads so we are entirely reliant on people engaging with our articles to reach people.  So if you like one be sure to Like, Share, Retweet or comment to get it out to more people, we estimate each time you do that has a similar extra reach to us spending 1-10 euro on paid ads.

How we got a referendum

• Finally a Referendum to Repeal the 8th - Organising Made this Happen
• How the government were forced to call a referendum to repeal the 8th

Poll analysis

• Repeal vote still too close to call when likely Don't Know to No switch taken into account
• Repealing the 8th - what the opinion polls are telling us
• Overview of polls through refererendum campaign

Questions of the referendum campaign

• Distrust politicians? - Vote for Repeal because we forced them to call the referendum, we are the rebellion
• Finance, SIPO & the repeal referendum
• Maser’s Repeal the 8th mural covered up again but who regulates the regulator?
• Well that makes no sense - on the anti-choice 1916 beermats 

Looking at the No campaigns

• Comments as #repealthe8th referendum becomes a reality
• Fascist Party Openly Campaigns as 'Abortion Never' to Keep 8th Amendment
• Extremists on 'both sides'? Not really
• A trip into the anti-choice mind

Dark ads & other dirty tricks

• Anti-choice groups freak out as google bans referendum ads - what had they planned?
• Repeal and the online battle - when become a billionaire isn't an option
• Health minister targeted with graphic posters as No to Repeal campaign turns nastier
• Disgusting smear attempt by anti-choice FB page
• ICBR get the SPUC off treatment after they target LGBTQ spaces during Repeal referendum
• Our photographer threatened & assaulted at Rally for Life as an angry No campaign steps up hateful rhetoric
• 100s of Yes posters torn down by organised gang in County Cork

Lessons from elsewhere

• What Happened When Portugal Decriminalised Abortion?
• The pro-choice & feminist movement in Greece with relevance to Ireland
• Lessons for Ireland from the Pro-Choice movement in Italy

Some activity reports from our members

• Together for Yes launched to campaign for Yes vote in Repeal of 8th referendum
• Kildare turns out for Repeal
• Kilkenny referendum campaign is on!
• Belfast rallies in solidarity with demand to Repeal the 8th
• 1000s march in Dublin International Women's Day 2018 as referendum to Repeal the 8th is finally confirmed
• Video - Belfast activists canvass for Yes in Cavan
• A super canvass for Repeal in Swords

About WSM

We are an anarchist organistion founded in 1984 by people who had campaigned against the 8th amendment.  We have been involved in pro-choice struggles ever since as part of our wide ranging solidarity with struggles and organising for an anarchist future.  

The papers below capture our collective positions on class, patriarchy and intersecting issues, if you want to keep in cotnact with us post-referendum sign up on our email system at www.wsm.ie/user/register

Anarchism, Oppression & Exploitation

• Class and Exploitation
  • Work and Workplace Organising
• Patriarchy
  • Sex, Gender, and Sexuality
    • Towards Women's Freedom
    • Queer Oppression
    • Abortion Rights