Pro-choice advocates living abroad may not be able to make it to the Strike 4 Repeal marches in Dublin on Wednesday, but they are making their views known in a different way.
Enda Kenny’s inbox has been filling up in the run up to International Women’s Day with postcards sent from cities including Prague, Toronto, London and Berlin, calling on the Taoiseach to repeal the eighth amendment to the Irish Constitution and introduce free and legal access to abortion in Ireland. The eighth amendment was introduced in a 1983 referendum, and effectively bans abortion in Ireland.
Senders have been posting photos of their postcards on social media using the #Post4Repeal hashtag.
The campaign was started in February by 29-year-old Irish woman Ciara Maitra, who has been working in a girls’ school in Paris for the past 18 months, and her friend John Hyland, who works for Greenpeace in Brussels.
“The eighth amendment has not been far from my mind since I moved here. The shame I have experienced when I explain to French people what happened to Savita, Miss X and Miss Y engulfs me,” she says.
Revelations about the discovery of infant remains in Tuam last week have “pushed me further into a state of sadness and shame I never thought possible,” she adds.
“We are asking Irish people abroad, and anyone who supports a repeal of the eighth amendment, to bombard an Taoiseach with the gaudiest, naffest postcards available… we want him to know that the world is watching.”
The Strike 4 Repeal campaign is encouraging women in Ireland to take a day off work on Wednesday, March 8th to call for a referendum on the eighth amendment, following a similar movement in Poland in October against the tightening of abortion laws there.
Anti-abortion campaigner Cora Sherlock, who was invited to contribute this article but had not responded at time of publication, has written a lengthy blog post criticising the #Post4Repeal campaign, suggesting "everyone who sends one adds a post script, setting out how their foolproof strategy for how we should avoid the worst human rights abuses that abortion has caused in their country".
