Abortion

      To start I'm going to warn you that this is going to be a rant and now, just in case you don't know what's going on in Ireland with abortion at the moment, I'll give you a little bit of background so you might understand what you're reading. About 21 years ago, in 1992, there was a fourteen year old girl who had been raped and gotten pregnant from it, she wanted an abortion but as it was illegal in Ireland then (still is) planned to go to the UK to get one, once this was discovered she was forced to stay in the country by the judge. She had a miscarriage a short while later but it started a huge appeal for the change in the constitution regarding abortion. She was referred to as X for the duration of the trial to keep her privacy and it became known as, 'The X Case'. There were a few proposed changes to the constitution which didn't get through, so eventually this died out and was almost forgotten about. Last year it was the 20th, I suppose you could call it, anniversary of The X Case, sometime in February as far as I can remember. There were demonstrations about this then and vague plans to do more. A few months later, late October, a young woman died as she wasn't able to have an abortion after she was told that the foetus was not viable (going to be born dead), but they could not perform an abortion under Irish Law as the foetus' heart was still beating. She was in excruciating pain for the following three days, she was to weak to travel to England and was refused an abortion although she was constantly begging for one. After her death the movement began again, for a few months there was a demonstration every Wednesday and a march every Saturday. It eventually started to fade, not completely it was just less thought or talked about. There were still protests occasionally, not all the time but fairly regularly. Wow, and I haven't even started my rant yet. If you wanna know more, Google it. Oh and also, the people who are against abortion are 'Pro-Life' and people for it are 'Pro-Choice'. 
     Today was the annual Youth Defense march (Pro-Life) where they get people from everywhere in Ireland and bring them to Dublin for free for this big protest (they've got loads of American cash behind them). This year it was a bit of a big deal because of the whole Savita Halappanavar thing (the woman who died). They were marching down from Parnell Square to the Dail (the Irish parliament building) or something like that. Wherever it is they were going they went down O'Connell Street which was lined with people like me, holding placards, banners or, in my case, a spray-painted Irish flag, yelling at them as they passed, now I don't understand why abortion  has any affect on them as a majority of the crowd were well past the age for having children. So basically I spent two hours yelling "Pro-Life is a lie, you don't care if women die" and "Shame" and just booing old nuns and priests and other elderly people (as well as a few younger ones). This wouldn't have been too bad if they hadn't brought so many children with them. These children hadn't a clue why they were there or why they were being shouted at by thousands of people, it must have been a traumatic experience for them and, if I had been their position at that age, it would certainly bring on nightmares and things like that. Some of the kids didn't really mind it but a few were really obviously affected by this. There was this one little boy, about five years old, who was on the verge of tears and trying to pull out of the march but his dad wouldn't let him even though he was absolutely terrified, I mean I understand you want to prove your point but how could you make your son go through something like that which will very possible haunt him for years to come just to prove some stupid bloody point that doesn't even make all that much sense. So there was the scumbag parents who, to be honest, didn't treat their children very well. As well as this, the second my mother turned her back on me for just a second, to talk to someone this old woman, well into her nineties, came over to me, grabbed my wrist and told me that I have no hope in life, when my mum noticed her she told her to "stay the fuck away from my daughter" among other things. I think it's because I'm young and there weren't really very many people who brought their kids on the pro-choice side of things but about half the nuns that passed me said a pray for me or blessed me, maybe the think that my "soul" can still be "saved". Too bad for them. I respect not wanting to get an abortion and think that it should be up to you, not to the church or the state which at the moment it is. I understand that if your religion says that abortions shouldn't be had you may feel obliged to follow this but it does not mean that you have the right stop people from doing what you want with yourself. Every year there are thousands going there because it's impossible to get an abortion without breaking the law here. You risk 14 years in jail if you get an illegal abortion in Ireland. Rape is only 7 years, why the fuck is abortion double that? It's illogical, old-fashioned and disgusting that there are so many people out there trying their hardest to take away the rights of the woman, the right for health obviously doesn't come to mind. Presuming the bill will pass it'll still be practically impossible to get an abortion here due to the restrictions set out by the bill. It has to be a life threatening reason, something has gone wrong and the mother will die if there's no abortion or something along the lines of that. If the mother is
suicidal and under the risk of killing herself she needs to get four psychiatrists to say that she should get an abortion as well as three doctors, this is ridiculous as it is but some psychiatrists have said that if a pregnant woman is suicidal and wants an abortion they will be forced to sign themselves into a mental institution for the duration of their pregnancy. FORCED. I presume court cases can be taken against this but if your genuinely suicidal you don't want to go to court, you're more likely to just get a backstreet abortion or commit suicide, neither of these are good, backstreet abortions are illegal and dangerous and suicide is, well, suicide. I think I may have been somewhat repetitive there, but I just needed to get that out of my system. I was going to apologize here at the end in case I insulted anyone but then I realized that I really don't care if I insulted you with my views, they are mine, after all. I am going to apologize to Weronika though because I'm fairly sure I swore in there once or twice, so yeah, sorry 'bout that.
     Cya,
     Ruska

                      This is the picture of Savita released into the press with the story of her death last October.