Image Courtesy: Hannah McKay/Reuters

Ireland has advanced a bill which will prevent the sale of goods from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
 
The Israeli foreign ministry has reprimanded Ireland’s ambassador Alison Kelly after the lower house of Irish parliament voted in favour of a bill that will ban the purchase of goods and services from the illegal Israeli settlements.
 
In a statement, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a shame that Ireland “condemns the only democratic state in the Middle East”.
 
“Israel is outraged over the legislation against it in the Irish parliament, which is indicative of hypocrisy and anti-Semitism,” the statement said.

 
The lower house of the Irish parliament – the Dail – yesterday voted in favour of the bill as the goods procured from settlements are considered illegal under international law. The bill was previously passed through the parliament’s upper house – the Seanad – before proceeding to the lower house and receiving a 78-45 majority in favour, Al Jazeera explained.
 
The bill – officially known as the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill – still needs to pass several more stages before being signed into Irish law, but it is expected to progress given its broad base of support from Irish opposition parties.
 
Once approved, the law would see fines of up to €250,000 ($284,000) or five years in jail be handed down for those found guilty of importing or selling any goods or services originating in the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem or West Bank settlements, the Jerusalem Post reported.
 
“Though estimates put the value of settlement-made exports to Ireland at between only $580,000 and $1.1 million annually, the symbolic value of the bill and its potential to influence other European countries to follow suit has been hailed as a victory by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative party, said the bill is a “great victory for the BDS movement” and vowed that “we will seek to pass similar laws in a number of European countries in the near future,” Middle East Monitor reported.
 
The Israeli PMO statement added that “Instead of Ireland condemning Syria for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians, Turkey for the occupation of Northern Cyprus and the terrorist organizations for murdering thousands of Israelis, it attacks Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. What a disgrace.”
 
Ireland has been a consistent and long-time supporter of the BDS movement.

The post Irish parliament passes bill that outlaws Israeli settlements goods appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Pro-choice activists at London’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade, March 2017. Photo: Dmitry Dzhus/Flickr. CC-BY-2.0 Some rights reserved.

Nice Irish girls don’t have sex. This is what I gathered growing up as a young woman in Ireland, at school in my local convent in Longford and at university in Dublin. If you had sex, you’d better be in a long-term relationship. Even then, you’d struggle to go on the pill because that would involve admitting to a stranger you were having sex outside marriage.

It’s safe to say that the fear of becoming pregnant was always there – that, and developing an STI that would leave you infertile for life. Why? Because sex was bad. That’s what you were taught during sex-ed class at school. If you were ‘at it’ and fell pregnant, you only had yourself to blame. As for having an abortion, well, that was the greatest sin of all.

I never had an abortion but in my early twenties a very dear friend said that she needed one. We discussed her options in a clandestine meeting, down a dark lane in a Dublin suburb. At six weeks pregnant, she decided on a termination. She booked flights to the UK, took a couple of days off of work and we didn’t speak about it again for 12 years.

Looking back, that was the moment when I became unreservedly and unapologetically pro-choice. I might not have realised which amendment to the Irish constitution forced my friend on a plane that day, but I knew something was very wrong with how our country was treating this ‘nice girl,’ my friend, who made a very difficult choice.

“That was the moment when I became unreservedly and unapologetically pro-choice.”

She hadn’t been raped; she hadn’t learned that the foetus wouldn’t survive outside the womb. She wasn’t ready to be a mother. As proprietor of her body, and governor of her life, that decision was rightfully hers. But she was left alone, ostracised, and feeling that she had become one of Ireland’s shameful exports.

Activists use chalk on pavement to show the number of Irish women who have travelled to England for safe and legal abortions since 1983. London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign protest, September 2017. Photo: Steve Eason/Flickr. CC-BY-2.0 Some rights reserved.

Ireland will go to the polls on 25 May to vote on whether it should repeal the 8th amendment, which prohibits a woman from having an abortion in Ireland unless her life is in direct danger. A woman who terminates a pregnancy faces 14 years in jail, even in cases of rape or when the foetus isn’t viable.

These are some of the most draconian abortion laws in the world. Repealing the 8th amendment is a subject that I speak about regularly to Irish family members and friends. Not many people that I’m close to would dare say that abortion shouldn’t be allowed in ‘extreme’ cases but some are hesitant when it comes to ‘regular’ abortions.

Why is this? I’m afraid it’s that dirty word again: sex.

Ireland has an uncomfortable relationship with sex – in particular women having sex outside of marriage. International readers might be forgiven for thinking that we’re a progressive little country; we were the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote, after all. But we still have a long way to go.

“I’m afraid it’s that dirty word again: sex. Ireland has an uncomfortable relationship with sex.”

I distinctly recall the double standards between men and women at university. Many young guys would happily engage in casual sex yet they’d be fiercely opposed to bringing home the same women to their Irish mothers. It would be much more palatable to take home a ‘nice girl’, wife-material that you could proudly take to mass on a Sunday.

Sexual promiscuity amongst Irish women, meanwhile, was shunned. Dare I say it, these ‘fallen women’ were even subject to slut-shaming from some of the more obnoxious young men at university. This was our normal.

The upcoming referendum is also about the way in which Ireland views women, sex and reproduction. Historically, Ireland has an appalling track record in these areas. Here we are again, in the 21st century, debating how we legislate over Irish women’s bodies.

And even if the 8th amendment is repealed, this ‘nice Irish girls don’t have sex’ mindset must be tackled if women are to fully access their reproductive rights. There are examples, including from Italy, where abortion has been legalised for years but can still be difficult to access because of widespread ‘conscientious objection’ by medical staff.

My covert whisperings, in that dark alley in Dublin many years ago, taught me that sex, pregnancy and abortion should not be our shameful secrets. We are not as conservative as we once were; many of us are certainly not as religious. If the women of Ireland are to be treated as equal humans, the 8th amendment must be unequivocally repealed.

I will not be voting in the upcoming referendum as I lost my voting privileges when I became resident in the UK. I will however be examining, scrutinising and watching our little country from afar, as it makes the greatest decision in my living memory.

Shaunagh Connaire is an Emmy nominated and duPont-Columbia award winning journalist and filmmaker. She’s worked on over 40 films for Channel 4 Unreported World and Dispatches and has produced documentaries for BBC & PBS Frontline. She’s originally from Ireland.
 

The post ‘Nice Irish girls don’t have sex’ is the old idea at the heart of historic abortion rights battle appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A Youth for Life anti-abortion campaigner. Photo: Youth for Life/Facebook.

Irish politicians have been deaf to the clamour of women’s voices calling for abortion rights for decades. Despite being the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote (in 2015), the republic of Ireland still maintains an abortion regime stricter than Saudi Arabia’s.

Abortion is legal in Ireland only when the mother’s life is at risk. The country’s constitutional misogyny has baffled fellow European states and earned it the censure of international groups including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and Amnesty International.

In northern Ireland, women carry the passports but not the entitlements of British citizens (who have had access to legal abortions for 50 years, since 1967). This island seems united in its deliberate disregard for women’s fundamental rights if nowhere else; those seeking terminations from either side of the border must travel abroad.

‘This island seems united in its deliberate disregard for women’s fundamental rights if nowhere else.’

Yesterday the Irish government announced that a referendum will be held next year, in May or June, on whether to repeal a constitutional amendment that gives equal rights to a woman and her unborn child, thus opening the door to legalising abortion.

Battle lines have been drawn between those who want the eighth amendment repealed, and those fighting to keep it. In northern Ireland, anti-abortion lobbying has so far succeeded in blocking attempts to bring reproductive rights in line with the rest of the UK.

On the frontline are two anti-abortion groups who work loosely together across the border: Precious Life in northern Ireland and Youth Defence in the south.

In the past, both groups spent their time protesting against family planning clinics holding nightmarish posters purporting to show ‘the aborted baby’ (despite the fact that abortion was already illegal) and assuring those of us trying to enter that we were going straight to hell.

Today these groups have successfully attracted articulate millennial women to their ranks, who are then placed front and centre to recruit others. Grisly images remain, but threats of eternal damnation have been replaced with “Love Life” protests and “Rally For Life” marches.

The tone has titled to mirror the language of human rights activism and growing pro-choice movements that have been propelled by a new and active, engaged and connected generation. The last five years have seen rising pro-choice mobilisation in Dublin, Belfast and elsewhere, amid ‘repeal the eighth’ campaigns.

Precious Life at the ‘Rally for Life’ in Dublin. Photo: Lucy Kelly/Youth for Life/Facebook.

In July I joined the youth brigade of Precious Life, called Youth For Life NI, as they embarked on a summer roadshow tour of northern Ireland. They visited eight towns and cities in a week, almost at the same time as a similar Youth Defence tour, which made 17 stops across the rest of Ireland over ten days.

Appointed to speak to me was the eloquent and charming 20-year-old Lucy Kelly, who joined Precious Life through an affiliate group at Queen’s University in Belfast, where she studies law. Kelly describes herself as a “pro-life feminist”. She’s a committed campaigner and, I gathered, a serial over-achiever.

“Abortion is absolutely femicide”, she told me. “Consider who is aborted now – over half of the babies are female. So many times it’s about gender selective abortions. It’s this whole thing about women’s rights, but what about a woman’s right to be born?”

“What about a woman’s right to be born?”

Kelly is a strong communicator and her talent is clearly being recognised within the organisation. At this year’s ‘Rally For Life’ in Dublin, she was tasked with introducing the entire march before it kicked off.

This march is the highlight of the Irish anti-abortion calendar, and a potent display of the immensely well-connected, church-backed and community-centred lobby. This year, organisers claim 70,000 people attended (though this figure is disputed).

When we met, Kelly and half a dozen other young activists were cheerfully handing out pamphlets, featuring improbable horror stories from US abortion clinics, to shoppers caught in Belfast’s summer rain.

They had set up a table displaying aged plastic props – a womb and vagina, and foetuses at different stages of development – and advertisements for Stanton Healthcare, founded by US Christian activist Brandi Swindell, that opened its first overseas anti-abortion clinic in Belfast in 2014, on the same central street as reproductive rights charity Marie Stopes.

Swindell, described by Cosmopolitan magazine as ‘the woman who wants to take down Planned Parenthood’, is also one of the founders of a group called ‘Generation Life’, which recruits young anti-abortion campaigners and teaches abstinence as a form of contraception. Swindell has also worked with Youth Defence in Ireland.

Lucy Kelly (left) in Dublin at the ‘Rally For Life’. Photo: Youth for Life/Facebook.

“We are not anti-women”, Kelly insists. “We want to save both the life of the mother and the life of the baby – we want better care for both.”

Youth for Life is small – “we’re about 30 really pro-active and engaged members,” Kelly says – but has a large network of supporters offline and, increasingly, online. Among other things Precious Life sends out weekly emails, which Youth For Life contributes to, with updates for supporters and requests for donations.

Their funding, Kelly insists, does not come from the US, as is widely believed to be the case, and instead is from “grassroots” activists. But there is certainly a level of collaboration across the Atlantic. “Pro-life people stick together,” she says. “The big march in Washington DC, [the] numbers get bigger every year. Some of us are actually hoping to go…this year.”

There are also links being built across Europe: for this summer’s roadshow in northern Ireland, the group was also joined by activists from a Slovakian anti-abortion group. “People all over seem to be waking up,” says Kelly.

“Pro-life people stick together.”

Kelly laments that “the media are very biased in favour of abortion,” and that “the media totally misinforms people of the facts.” To this she said: “bring on the referendum, because you will lose.”
There’s a slightly counter-culture feel to it all: Kelly’s group is small, but everyone I meet is under 30 and appears deeply invested in trying to win over the hearts and minds of those few members of the public who did stop to challenge their views.

They presented themselves as activists for truth more than God, who wasn’t mentioned as far as I could hear – at least not in the conversations I was trying to earwig.

Young anti-abortion activists on the roadshow. Photo: Youth for Life/Facebook.

“Something we don’t hear about is how women die in legal abortions,” Kelly adds. “There was a woman from Ireland who died in Marie Stopes in London. Hundreds of women have [died] from so-called safe and legal abortion – look it up online.”

The weaving together of facts, anecdote and fictions is disarming. Abortion is a safe medical procedure (in the US less than 1% of terminations results in complications), but it’s likely she was talking about the preventable death of 32-year-old Aisha Chithira who died in London hours after having an abortion at 22 weeks in January 2012.

At the time, Chithira’s husband told the The Irish Times that she had first gone to a maternity hospital in Dublin but was denied a termination. In Ireland on student visas, the couple’s journey to England was delayed as they raised travel funds. Late term abortions carry significantly higher risks; staff involved in Chithira’s care were cleared of negligence charges in 2016.

But this tragedy has been twisted by both Precious Life and Youth Defence online, and seized upon by activists in the US who leverage the immense power of social media to tell highly emotional stories peppered with truth that promote their agenda.

“The internet helps massively of course”, Kelly told me. “Social media is massive for us, and when it’s used well it can be extremely effective.”

“Social media is massive for us.”

The array of websites framed by anti-rights and anti-abortion ideology that have emerged over the past decade could be seen as a case study in the power of “fake news”.

During the roadshow, another young woman anti-abortion activist said: “I wasn’t always pro-life, I agreed with abortion under some circumstances, but then I saw something on Facebook that had a profound impact on me.” Then, she said, “the more I started looking into it and researching it on Facebook, the more pro-life I became.”

Grim online videos, including notoriously deceptive 2015 undercover films, made by the anti-abortion Centre for Medical Progress inside Planned Parenthood clinics in the US, are particularly potent currency on Facebook.

In the social media giant’s attempts to become a video-led platform, algorithms alert users to videos based on their ‘likes’. And so a particularly distressing video by a man called Dr. Anthony Levatino recently appeared on my radar.

The video, which has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube alone, purports to show a first-trimester abortion. It’s currently at the centre of a hunger strike outside Irish parliament, by a young man who says he will not eat until the prime minister watches it.

The hunger striker is also a member of Youth Defence, and has previously run as an independent candidate in the Irish general election. Being anti-abortion in Ireland brings a certain level of political capital with it that election hopefuls eagerly cash in.

This year’s Rally for Life march in Dublin. Photo: Youth for Life/Facebook.

This summer, Kelly found a number of male politicians willing to appear in a Youth for Life promotional video that is now on their Facebook page.

What’s more, she said that one of the politicians featured in the video boasted, separately, about refusing to help a constituent who came to his office asking for assistance to get to England to obtain an abortion.

“I don’t ever feel like I am on the losing side.”

“We were really lucky with the roadshow in that most of the major parties agreed to meet us,” said Kelly, naming the SDLP, UUP and DUP as among them. “Our big campaign at the moment is ‘lobby for life’…to encourage people to contact their representatives, as they will be the ones deciding on any changes to the law.”

Northern Ireland’s first minister Arlene Foster also met with Youth for Life this summer, and assured them that she would work to protect existing anti-abortion laws.

Looking ahead, Kelly seemed confident that the eighth amendment will stay in place, and that northern Ireland will continue to be a place where women’s reproductive rights are restricted.
“There will always be obstacles, but we have to stay positive,” she said. “In the pro-life movement, everyone is extremely happy. Everyone is fighting for life. I don’t ever feel like I am on the losing side.”

Lara Whyte is an investigative journalist and award-winning documentary and news producer focusing on issues of youth, extremism and women’s rights. Originally from Belfast in northern Ireland, Lara is based in London. She is currently commissioning editor (special projects) for 50.50 tracking the backlash against sexual and reproductive rights. Find her on Twitter: @larawhyte.

Courtesy: Open Democracy
 

The post On the warpath: the young women leading Ireland’s campaign against abortion appeared first on SabrangIndia.