POSTER PAIN
Images bringing back the horror of losing a baby, says mum of 3 td: i’ve been forced to broach debate with my kids
Mum-of-3 Kerri Stedman A SOCIAL Democrat TD told yesterday of her shock at seeing abortion debate posters near schools and community areas.
The party’s spokeswoman on children Jennifer Whitmore CONTROVERSIAL Pro-life posters are traumatising women getting over the loss of a baby, a mum warned yesterday.
Kerri Stedman told how Save The 8th placards provoked painful memories of her “darkest days”.
The 35-year-old campaigns for awareness after she lost her baby and almost died after an ecoptic pregnancy in December 2015.
Now the mother of three from Oylegate, Co Wexford, says she is haunted by graphic images of foetuses used by the Save The 8th campaign.
Kerri, who has daughters Emily, seven, Poppy, three, and one-year-old Lucy with husband George, said: “I have no problem with people campaigning on either side.
“But all I am saying is there needs to be some sensitivity for the women who have been through a loss. They are claimed it was a “completely unnecessary ploy” of campaigners and asked them to respect families.
She added: “My husband and I should be the ones to decide when, where and how we broach forgetting about the women in between, who are suffering after losing their baby and are hurt by these images.
“One poster has a scan picture and it says on it, ‘I am nine weeks old, I can yawn and kick, don’t repeal me’, and it is a massive trigger for me.
“My baby was eight weeks and one day according to the last scan. Every time I see that poster I am the very sensitive topic of abortion with our children.
“It is not up to organisations that are trying to push their own political agendas to force me into having that discussion – and I resent the fact that now when I taken right back to that moment. I find it very difficult to drive past Wexford General Hospital anyway. Now as I drive past I am hit by these posters outside the hospital too. “There is no real need for them. They are for shock value alone.”
John Mcguirk of Save the 8th campaign said: “It upsets me as well, and it is upsetting for people on all sides. We are, after all proposing to legalise ending the life of babies who are just the same as the very wanted child [Kerri Stedman] lost.”
Image am bringing my children out, I have to put some thought into whether there’s a chance we will come across graphic posters, and change my route as a result.
“It is generally accepted that children should be protected.”