Chisel these vows down for me, sculpt them in stone.

Protect them with satin from a wedding dress.

Weld these vows on for me.

Carve them in wood.

Play them on the keys of your piano.

Whisper these vows out for me, let a floating cloud hear, that I adore you today and forever.

Let the guests know

as they feast and they rejoice

that you design the very light of my essence.

So love, and love and dance with me.

Stillness, let it breathe.

May they know, that I adore you forever.

 

(photo by Mateja Jaksic)

When your eyes, are the eyes I see me with, then I am indigo.

Not scattered lost light, with no edge or depth, but indigo.

Not a lonely black cat, in an alley you can’t see, but indigo.

Dazzling ice beams, a rainbow colored calling, the brightness and the light.

When your eyes, are the eyes I see me with, then I am indigo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I think about you, you are the Cenotes.

I am sitting in a room where a Picasso is hanging, when I first hear some notes from a cello.  It’s raining outside and the people say it’s the first rain in six weeks.

I’m thinking about drifting and sinking, so I begin to climb down the slippery ladder steps into the water of a Cenote.  I’m afraid that I might fall, but I don’t.

Deep in the middle of Mexico, I remember something that I had long forgotten and it makes me happy.  I balance my breathing and concentrate on just one-step at a time.  For each note of the cello suite, one-step down.  In the end, I’m at the bottom, and the water looks delightful, this indigo cave water is warm and serene.

I breathe into the sound and I forget the rain.  I feel the bedrock limestone of Yucatán groundwater, and I forget to remember Picasso.

I have eased down slowly.  The air is different here, inside the earth.  And I can’t seem to remember the journey at all.  So I swim under it and it smells like history.  I hear a familiar voice say to me, I know you because you’ve been here before.

Is this my own echo, or am I the echo beneath?

Floating on my back, I adjust to the salty warmth and the memory of my ancestors dancing.  My heart expands but I can’t stay here too long.  Beneath the water, the urge to stay is strong, but a waning gibbous moon reminds me to go back to the brightness.  One stroke at a time, movements in harmony with the cello notes, back to the music, to the room with the Picasso in it.

Back to the rain.

I don’t know if you heard, but there was a referendum in Ireland last month.

To recap, the citizens of Ireland were asked if they wanted to repeal or retain the eighth amendment to the constitution, which, in practice, criminalised abortions here in Ireland, but allowed women and girls to travel to the UK for terminations instead.  Over 66% of people agreed that this amendment was hypercritical and unjust and it was repealed on 25 May 2018.

I was always pro-choice.

I was born in the middle of the Welsh vallies at the start of the 70s in Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and Nye Bevan’s constituencies.  I remember the miners’ strikes and living in working class Thatcher’s 80’s Britain vividly, so it’s hardly a surprise that my political views are a little left of centre.  Most left-wingers are pro-choice, so I held that belief too.

So far, so easy.

I have always believed in “equality” and I have spent my working life involved in education, or in development-based organisations that try to fight inequality.  And my first “action” to support the repeal the 8^th movement was on International Women’s Day, 2017, when I posted something fairly vague and vacuous on Facebook.  I said that it was unjust that some women and girls could travel to the UK for terminations but those without financial security had to take the unsupervised abortion pills in Ireland.  Those with money could be medically cared for, and those without money were essentially breaking the law and risking 14 years in prison.  The issue was so clearly about equality for me that I didn’t even do a spell check before I posted the paragraph.  And posting this on Facebook came with absolutely no risk to myself.

A year later on International Women’s Day 2018, I posted more!

I talked about equality of access again, and I started mentioning women and girls who had refugee status and asylum seeker status who could not travel to Britain.  So the legislation was discriminatory and affected the most vulnerable women in our society the most.  But I was talking about “those women over there” and not me.

Not me.  Those. Over. There.

The Together For Yes campaign kicked-off and I started doing the odd bit.  I donated money.  I bought a badge.  I signed up to a fun-run, and yet I was still taking no personal risk to support this campaign at all.  I had a sympathetic opinion, which was almost academically removed and charitable rather than felt with a passion, because I still did not relate the issue or the fight to me.

Then something happened.

It became very clear, after an almost Kafkaesque conversation with someone from the department of Justice, that my application for citizenship would not be ready in time to register to vote.  Then I realised that I had to do more than tweet.  I actually had to get out into the streets and start talking to strangers.  My logic here was that if I could “convince” someone to change their mind and vote YES, then this was my YES vote by proxy.

So I did a bit of canvassing and leafleting.

I was terrified at first, because I genuinely thought that I would be asked on all matters fertility related and possibly quizzed on other areas of the Constitution.  I soon discovered that most people actually just wanted to say what was on their minds, and discuss any sticky points that they had.  It was generally quite interesting and quite engaging and I like to think I helped one or two people come to their own decision to vote YES.

But here’s the thing.

In less than 15 hours’ worth of volunteering on the campaign, I experienced quite a high number of uncomfortable moments.  Up until this point, I was still talking about “those women over there”, but when you are told, by strangers in the street, that you ought to be ashamed of yourself, that you are Satan, that you’re a slut who needs cleansing and that you are a lost cause who is going to hell, you start getting angry.  Not sad or blue, or sympathetic to the cause.

But really fucking angry.

It dawned on me then, that I was asking permission for the rights to my womb. How incredible it was that some people believed that they had the right to say NO to me.  How dare they think they could?  Then the pronouns changed, in the most exquisite of ways.  I stopped talking about women and girls and started saying “us”.  I stopped talking about women with refugee and asylum seeker status and started to say “we”.  I started to say “me”; I started to say “I”.

Two weeks on and I am still in shock and recovery.  Leafleting made me think that the amendment would be retained, and I’m still struggling to be kind to those who voted NO.  Their right to have a clear conscience and sleep well at night, because they think abortion is morally wrong, would have affected my right to choose what is best for my womb, in the most profound of ways.  I am trying to remember Nietzsche’s warning that when fighting monsters we must be careful that we ourselves do not turn into monsters and the Dalai Lama’s advice that life without love and compassion is not really a life.  With this in mind, I will try and make more of an effort to be kinder to those who voted NO next week.

Maybe next week I will be kinder to them.

My final social media post related to the criticism that the YES supporters were celebrating the result of the referendum, and I wrote this:

“I’ve heard these awful and malicious lies that some people were out drinking champagne on Saturday afternoon, and into the early evening. I assure you I was drinking Pinot and Prosecco. When will these lies ever stop? Fake News!”

Finally, I was using personal pronouns.  I was putting my hat, my passion and my womb into the discourse and I was taking a bit of a risk.  Finally, I realised that to stand by the women and girls of Ireland, I had to be counted as one of them.

And I am so very proud that I did.  I am just sorry I was so late.

When we cast our vote on May 25^th to repeal or retain the eighth amendment we will send out a powerful signal to the world that will impact on women, families, communities and movements far beyond Ireland.

In spite of the strong progress that has been made in the advancement of women’s rights in the past decades, there are some very troubling counter-vailing trends across Europe, the US and many developing countries – with women’s reproductive rights and access to abortion as particularly fraught flashpoint for this.

In some developing countries, we have seen the tragic and horrific consequences of harshly imposed restrictions on abortion access. In Paraguay in March of this year, a fourteen-year-old girl who was the victim of rape tragically died during childbirth; her body too young to safely carry out a pregnancy[1]. In 2015, an eleven-year-old child was forced to carry a pregnancy to term in spite of the enormous risks posed to her health as a result[2]. In El Salvador, women have been imprisoned for more than 10-years for miscarrying – under suspicion that they may have acted deliberately to induce miscarriage or stillbirth[3].

Even within this context, the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution is a harsh and inflexible measure. In Ireland, procuring an abortion, regardless of age, circumstance or associated danger (short of an immediate threat to one’s life), potentially carries a fourteen-year prison sentence. The stories of the inevitably tragic consequence of this are many; for example, in March this year it was reported that an Irish 12 year old was given an abortion in England which she would have been forced her to carry to term under Irish law despite the dangers posed for someone so young or else faced a criminal penalty[4]. It should be a sobering realisation to all of us in Ireland that our eighth amendment lends credibility and legitimacy to the implementation of similar horrendous laws and their tragic consequences around the world.

The imposition of Trump’s “Global Gag Order” last year further jeopardised the health of women in developing countries. The global gag order withholds funding from any non-U.S. organisation that offers abortion services, information or referrals. As a result, millions of marginalised women cannot access contraception, family-planning information, abortion where required or full healthcare throughout pregnancy[5].

In our neighbouring European countries, the anti-abortion lobby is growing in strength and boldness. Rather than focusing on the issues that have been demonstrated to reduce abortion rates – access to free contraception, informed medical-led family planning, sex education, the lobby is focusing on shutting down women’s access to care. In Italy, doctors face huge pressure and intimidation to join the register of “conscientious objectors” to abortion, leaving women in many regions of Italy forced to travel long distances[6]. Protesters are gathering outside abortion clinics in the UK to intimidate women as they go in[1]. In Poland, legislation has been proposed to impose further restrictions on access to abortion – and has been met with strong resistance[2].

Whether in Ireland, or Europe or developing countries, it is the vulnerable and the marginalised who are consistently most penalised by the controls placed on their bodies and their choices. It is the girls and women who can’t afford contraception, who are victims of abuse, who are in controlling and abusive relationships, who suffer health difficulties and disabilities, who do not have the means to travel. These girls and women deserve better than coercion, criminalised and for society to turn a blind eye to them. They deserve support, understanding and the best possible healthcare.

In Ireland, we have seen the strength of a grassroots movement grounded in compassion for women in crisis and commitment to the advancement of human rights and equality. In so many countries, communities and households around the world, women are fighting a similar battle. We can stand with them and support them. In the year of the centenary of women’s suffrage, it seems apt to quote the suffragette Millicent Fawcett, “Courage calls to courage everywhere”. The courage of so many Irish women and girls to tell their story and the courage of us in Irish society to fight for them can send out a powerful signal to women and girls around the world fighting for justice and rights.

Repeal the Eighth Amendment for women and girls everywhere.

Vote Yes.

By Janet Horner.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ealing-council-abortion-clinic-ban-protests-marie-stopes-london-labour-party-a8298621.html

[2] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/nationwide-protests-in-poland-against-move-to-restrict-abortion-1.3438363

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/mar/22/paraguayan-rape-victim-14-dies-giving-birth

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/13/paraguay-11-year-old-gives-birth-abortion

[3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/el-salvador-upholds-30-year-sentence-stillbirth-case-171215104626774.html

[4] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/garda%C3%AD-investigate-12-year-old-s-abortion-in-britain-1.3431941

[5] https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/14/trumps-mexico-city-policy-or-global-gag-rule

[6] https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/claudia-torrisi/abortion-italy-conscientious-objection

I met an old friend this bank holiday weekend…

We hadn’t seen one another in many years, so I was happy to sit with her for an hour in Phoenix Park; it was a sunny day in Dublin and we chatted for a while.

I asked her how she was holding up during the debates around the referendum, as I knew she terminated a pregnancy some time ago, and I just hoped that the news and the posters weren’t too upsetting for her.  She told me no, that this wasn’t the case at all.  Rather, she said she was going through a period of profound healing and growth.

Six years ago, my friend decided to terminate her pregnancy for a labyrinth of complicated and personal reasons.  At that time, she had asylum seeker status, so she was unlikely to get entry clearance for the UK, where she could have legally terminated her pregnancy.  So she decided to buy the unregulated, illegal, unsupervised abortion pill online instead.

She started to experience severe pains very quickly so wondered if she had read the instructions carefully enough.  English is not her first language so she wasn’t sure if she had done what she was supposed to do.  She also wondered if she was experiencing “abnormal” or “normal” pain as she had nothing to compare it to, and found it hard to contextualise.  At one point she thought she might go to the nearest accident and emergency department, because she was starting to feel faint and she started to panic that everything was going terribly wrong.  But she had heard that this illegal pill carried with it a 14 year prison sentence, and so postponed presenting to the A&E department for as long as possible.  When her brother found her unconscious on the bathroom floor, he very wisely called the ambulance, and possibly saved her life by doing so.

The excellent health workers cared for her for four days and then discharged her and she went home.  No one arrested her, but she lived with the fear that someone might, at some time, come knocking on her door, arrest her and send her back to her own country. She said she had lived with this fear for six years.

She told me, while we were sitting in the park on a sunny day in Dublin, that every time she sees someone wearing a badge with YES on it, or a t.shirt with the word REPEAL on it, she wants to kiss them gently on the cheek and say thank you.  She told me that for the first time in six years, she hasn’t felt like a criminal, but feels supported and cared for instead.  She told me that she believes the people of Ireland will vote with their hearts this time, and that one day, hopefully very soon, people in her position will be able to access safe, regulated and compassionate health care in Ireland.

This referendum is not about abortion, it’s about legislation that is hypocritical to its core, completely unfit for purpose and impossible to uphold.

Please vote YES on 25 May 2018.

 

 

 

I would have voted YES.

My application for Irish citizenship will not be processed by the time of the referendum, so I will be unable to vote.  I should have applied for citizenship much earlier and I’m sorry I can’t vote.

I would have voted YES.

I would have voted YES to repeal the 8^th amendment, because I don’t believe that a woman should have to travel overseas to terminate a pregnancy or take an illegal, unregulated abortion pill without medical supervision at home, and risk 14 years in prison for doing so.

I would have voted YES because this current legislation is hypocritical in the most extraordinary of ways; and it makes everyone in this society complicit with this hypocrisy.  We all know women who have travelled, and we all know women who have bought the pills online.  Even if those women haven’t shared their stories directly with us, we know them.  Can we ignore them for much longer?

I would have voted YES, not because I “agree” with abortion or think that abortion is “good”, but because life can be strange and complicated and terrifying and odd.  Because it’s not about me, and what I believe or where my opinion is.  It’s about all the women in our society.  All of the women in our society.

I would have voted YES, because of the health care advice from the World Health Organisation, because the Migrants’ Rights Groups in Dublin are supporting it, because many doctors and lawyers are supporting it.

I would have voted YES, because the current legislation doesn’t prevent terminations of pregnancies.  The current legislation is unfit for purpose and doesn’t serve the society I live in.  The current legislation needs to be changed.

If the 8^th amendment is repealed I would welcome more education about sexuality in schools, with more access to contraception, including the morning after pill.  I would welcome a mature discussion about how to provide the best services and care to the many different types of women who have to face the most difficult decision a person will ever have to make.  But let’s repeal it first.  Then we can look at long-term health advice, counselling and interventions afterwards.

I would have voted YES.

I have given up fiction for the new year, and so far so good.

Every verb I have used has been factual and based on evidence, while I’ve hardly used any adverbs at all.  I’ve made this sacrifice so that I can concentrate all my creative efforts on editing my blog “Shorter than me” into some sort of bite sized manuscript, so that I can self-publish by Easter.  However, I am finding editing to be a task that I am neither good at, nor interested in so perhaps my initial hopes for an Easter book launch, may be more poignant than that last speech in Bladerunner.

You know the one, the one all about all the tears in the rain.

A book in my hand is worth more than virtual pages on a WordPress blog, and I desire the hard version of “Shorter than me” for a number of reasons.  Firstly to secure my own immortality, secondly to appease my monstrously vain and enormous ego, and finally so that my parents can read the stories, as they do not frequent the world wide web.  Mam and Dad have no social media presence, so I would like them to have their own copies.

So what I am doing now, is not writing.

This is ranting, this is shouting, this is trying to give my monkey brain monologue an outlet and a voice, this is just saying what is mainly on my mind.

Today, what is mainly on my mind is my need to become an Irish citizen as soon as possible.  I need to be Irish so that I am protected from the unknown fall-out of Brexit, and so that I can vote in the next referendum.  I need to be Irish because I’ve lived here for so long now, that it’s almost rude not to apply.

In case you’re interested, the next referendum to be held in Ireland will ask its citizens (and not just its residents, hence my need to convert) if they wish to repeal or not repeal the 8^th amendment to the Irish constitution.  My understanding on this very complex of matters is that the 8^th amendment essentially prevents a woman from having a pregnancy terminated in the State, however, she may travel to the UK or to other countries if she wishes to do so.

So here’s my problem.

I don’t think this referendum is actually about abortion.

It’s not about a person’s ethical, moral, religious, academic or hypothetical opinion about abortion.  It’s strictly about equality.  I’ll try to explain my point of view (because that’s all it is, after all, it’s just my point of view).

Let’s take two women who live in Ireland, one is called A and one is called B.

Both women have chosen not to continue with their pregnancies, but A can travel to the UK to have the procedure, while B cannot. B cannot travel because of a number of diverse reasons.  Perhaps she is financially unable to travel or perhaps she has refugee or asylum seeker status, which would make it impossible for her to get a visa to enter the UK.  Perhaps she is in an abusive relationship and is unable to leave her other children unattended, or perhaps she is the victim or rape or incest and does not have the agency to be able to organise the travel, on top of all the other trauma.  Perhaps for a hundred other reasons, not even mentioned here, she cannot travel.

So woman A has the procedure in the UK, comes back to Ireland and continues with her life.

Woman B, however, now has to buy some medication from the internet, or perhaps from a friend of a friend.  She now has to take this pill without any medical advice or supervision, support or counselling.  Woman A and Woman B have two completely different sets of reproductive choices, based on their place in society, and typically, it’s the most vulnerable women in our society who are unable to travel.

But both women will still terminate their pregnancies.

Changing the law in Ireland will simply give all women equal rights to choose, how they end their pregnancy, not if they end it.  Changing the law will not prevent one abortion, nor will it encourage another.  Changing the law will just give all women, equal rights and access to safe and medically supervised treatment.

Current figures suggest that 11 women a day travel abroad for the procedure, but there is no reliable data on how many abortion pills are bought online or on the informal market (IFPA).  We can assume, therefore, that everyone in Ireland knows more than one woman who has either travelled abroad for an abortion, or else bought the abortion pill online, and taken it here at home.

Surely, this can’t continue?

Please contact me, if you think this situation should continue, as I would love to hear from you.  I’m not really interested in discussing our personal opinions about abortion, as I don’t think the referendum is about that.  I honestly believe it’s about equality for all the women who live in Ireland.  I take my application for Irish citizenship seriously, and I also take my ability and freedom to be able to vote in a referendum sincerely, so I want to think about my choice carefully.

Please contact me then, if you have a different point of view, based on the logic I have mentioned.  So that’s what is mainly on my mind today, so just for today, I will leave it there.

Reference for the statistics:

In 2016, 3,265 women and girls gave Irish addresses at UK abortion services. This number is an underestimation, as not all women will provide their Irish addresses at UK abortion clinics. Some women also travel to other countries, such as the Netherlands.

https://www.ifpa.ie/Hot-Topics/Abortion/Statistics

My grandmother loved to bake apple pies, which she would serve hot with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, or cold with some extra-thick double cream.  She gave the children adult sized portions, with a wink, which suggested that the secret was safe.  “Eat the sugary delights and enjoy them” the wink seemed to say, so we did.

She simply didn’t give a shit.

In the summer we ate fresh strawberries with ice-cream with chocolate flakes crumbled over them.  We sucked homemade, icy, orange lollipops in the garden and she made us coke-floats and banana milkshakes on demand.  In the winter she let us toast bread on the open fire, and then we smothered it with rivers of butter.  Different flavoured jams could be poured on top, and if you wanted, you could lick the jam straight from the spoon, right out of the pot.

That was all OK in nan’s house.

You could have hot chocolate for breakfast, why not?  Home-made rice puddings with all the sugar from south America dumped inside.  Raspberry flavoured sponge cakes, Christmas fruit cakes, oceans of luscious custard over hot rhubarb tarts.  Delicious bubbles of delight, heaven in china bowls, our happiness in the puddings.

I can’t remember the treats from autumn or spring, but somewhere beneath the syrup and the sugar highs, we all found contentment.  I can see two or three of the cousins sitting next to nan, watching her shows on TV, but we were so stuffed from the produce that we were barely able to laugh at the funny scenes.

My grandmother didn’t seem to notice or care for the irony of an overweight woman with a sweet tooth.  She simply ate what she wanted and when.  There was no fixed dessert time at her house either, children too could eat what they wanted and when.  By the time my grandmother had grandchildren roaming through her home, she had lost so much.  She’d lost her parents and siblings, her independence and her ambitions, her first born and her worries.  She had a calmness about her concerns by that time.

One summer I bought her a giant Toblerone back from my school trip to France.  She graciously shared it with me, but already I was growing out of sweet things and growing out of treats.  It wouldn’t be too long before I would be joining in with the adults in our condemnation of my nan’s diet and lifestyle.  I would soon commit the ultimate betrayal of growing up, developing a liking for savory snacks and encouraging her to eat sensibly.

I became “concerned” and “worried” about my grandmother’s diet and health, and instead of licking ice-cream from a giant spoon directly from the tub from the chest freezer, I abandoned her instead, to drab low sugar yoghurts and insipid fruit bars.

I really wish I hadn’t.

Thank you for my life.  I said to the South American cacti in the glasshouse in Glasnevin.  I know it’s not mine to own, it’s just on loan, and I’m fine with that.

Thank you for my life.  I said to the graceful orchid and the resplendent snowdrop.

To the magnificent hibiscus, I said thank you most of all.  I especially adore the sound of your name.  It gives me such pleasure to say it.

Hibiscus.

Hibiscus.

Hibiscus.

Gentle mysteries of the soil and air, thank you.