Speaking at an Alliance for Choice ‘Solidarity with Texas’ pro-choice rally in Waterloo Place over the weekend People Before Profit Cllr Maeve O’Neill said,
‘Firstly I want to send my solidarity to women and pregnant people in Texas. This extreme anti-abortion, anti-choice and anti-women’s rights law in Texas should alarm everyone concerned with human rights.
Even though this month 2 years will have passed since abortion was decriminalised in the North we still do not have access to safe, free local abortion services here.
And there is nothing new about us having unequal services when it comes to women’s reproductive healthcare. Right now contraceptive waiting lists are far too long. Never mind our non existent early medical abortion (EMA) service. This is a continuing occurance where the powers that be refuse to support this essential healthcare. That is why Texas matters and that is why it is so important that we continue to stand here to demand the legally agreed abortion services.
I want to give thanks to and express my devastation that the Informing Choices NI central access point into EMA services had to stop their service as of 5pm yesterday because they were given no funding from the Department of Health who have a responsibility to commission these services.
I was criticised by some DUP and SDLP Cllrs at the full Council meeting on Thursday night for saying the Council should support this protest today and speak up for the right to choose here and globally. They said bringing the motion forward was “reprehensible” and “disgusting”. They said PBP didn’t know how to “behave” and had “bad manners”.
Obviously, none of them are here today. We commend those parties who consistently vote with PBP here and elsewhere to support abortion rights.
Right to choose campaigners have been done down for decades by the political establishment. Women and their supporters were tortured and bullied for demanding equal rights. Establishment parties who did this are now trying to tell us when it’s appropriate to mention the right to choose. The doing down hasn’t stopped.
What’s reprehensible is that we still cannot access basic abortion services! What’s disgusting is people being harassed on their way into clinics seeking medical care. What good are political reps who wrap themselves in the rainbow flag but who can’t take a clear stand for the right to choose?
I have no patience for supposedly progressive establishment political parties who say they support civil rights but who can’t take a clear pro-choice, pro-women’s rights position.
Playing by the rules will get us nowhere. It’ll get us nowhere on the right to choose. Nowhere on stopping climate disasters. Nowhere on a decent pay rise for health workers. Nowhere on eradicating child poverty. Nowhere on Black Lives Matter and racial equality. People who have brought change have never played by the rules because the rules are designed to stop change.
The failure of the Stormont Executive to implement legally agreed abortion services violates human rights here and continues to make people feel criminalised.
Women have been let down by the state for far too long. Our bodies have been controlled and policed. It is policies from the state on the 2 child benefit cap, policies that have seen the massive levels of child poverty in the north, policies that do not support women after they have a baby with free childcare, that means women must choose to have an abortion in order to survive. It is state VAWG. We must continue this fight for properly resourced abortion services and sexual and reproductive health services, for safe access zones, and trans healthcare which is our legal and human right.”