Workers Solidarity Movement

Over 100 people gathered outside Gianna Care, the rogue ‘pregnancy counselling’ clinic on Dorset Street, to express their anger and disgust after their bogus service was exposed by a journalist, who went undercover as a pregnant woman seeking advice for her crisis pregnancy.

A number of police raids have occurred in search for abortion pills in the north this past week. According to the London Times "At least a dozen other people connected with the pills have been contacted by the PSNI and invited for interview." This will impact people in the south as many pills provided to people south of the border generally come through the north.

March 8th 2017 and International Womens Day sees an enormous mobilisation in Dublin to demand repeal of the eight amendment to the Irish  Constitution.  Thousands of people blocked O’Connell street bridge as part of #Strike4Repeal and then in the evening 11,000 marched on the Dail.

International Woman's Day March 8th and the continued refusal of the Irish government to introduce the referendum to remove the hated 8th amendment results in an enormous mobilization peaking at unchtime blocking off O'Connell st bridge is

An enormous and militant protest was called under the title of Strike For Repeal. The purpose is to try and force the government to immediately introduce a referendum to get rid of the Eighth Amendment. This amendment passed in 1983 makes it illegal for abortion to be carried out in Ireland under all almost all circumstances. 

In what is by any measure a wonderful mark of solidarity the women fighting ISIS in Rojava have taken the time to send solidarity greetings to next Wednesdays #strike4repeal in Ireland.

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.

Opinion polls using complex questions have become a common method of political manipulation in our time.  The method is simple, the questions are used to frame the way the subject considers the issue and so direct the answer they give.  That directed answer is then presented as some ‘objective truth’ discovered by the person or group who framed the question.  A poll that simply asks ‘Should women control their own bodies’ is liable to get one response, today’s poll that instead gives a long set of options around the degree women should be judged under law was designed to give another.

The WSM are supporting and taking part in the ‘Strike for Repeal’ events on March 8th, intended to demand the government stop stalling and introduce a referendum to repeal the hated 8th amendment that denies access to abortion.  We have been fighting Ireland’s anti-abortion access laws since the 1980’s, a period when they meant books and magazines were being banned because they had contact details for clinics in Britain.  We continue to demand that access to termination be an option to be decided on by a pregnant person as part of a free health service.  The 8th amendment should never have been introduced, the referendum to repeal it should be delayed no longer. 

What follows are 8 of the reasons to take part in ‘Strike for Repeal’ events near you Wednesday followed by links to all the Facebpok event notices across Ireland and elsewhere.

Saturday 21st January saw 1000s take part in a Women's March against Trump in Dublin, a local solidarity march with the Women's March on Washington. It's estimated that 1% of the US population took to the streets to protest the Trump presidency that day with solidarity protests in dozens of cities around the world including Belfast.

Feminists in Ireland are upping their game against the 8th amendment and indeed against the Irish state. The newly formed group, Strike for Repeal, are preparing to ‘strike’ if a date is not set for a referendum to repeal he 8th Amendment by International Women’s day on March 8th.

In a press release the group has said “The strike will not be an industrial strike in the traditional sense but could include taking an annual leave day off work, refraining from domestic work for the day, wearing black in solidarity or staging a walkout during your lunch break. We also encourage any business owners in a position to close their services at no cost to workers, to do so for all or part of the day as a solidarity action.”