Abortion ban and murder – what a time to be a woman

HOT on the heels of the recent school shooting in Texas, America wasted no time in shocking the world once again as the Supreme Court overturned its landmark Roe vs Wade ruling on abortion rights. This hands individual states the power to restrict or ban abortion, effectively making it a postcode lottery as to whether a woman will be ‘lucky’ enough to win the right to decide what she does with her own body.

Fear and fury.

These are the two main emotions I felt when I heard the news. Fear that this is only the beginning of women’s rights and everything our predecessors worked for being undone. Fear that banning abortion won’t stop it from happening, but instead will just drive it underground. Fear that this Supreme Court insanity could be replicated in other countries. Fury that in this day and age, America, ‘land of the free’, is really ‘land of the controlled’. Gun owners now have more rights there than women. It is not just taking away a woman’s right to make decisions about an unwanted pregnancy, but it also builds barriers for women seeking miscarriage care or cancer treatment during pregnancy.

Growing up in Ireland, we were terrified of getting pregnant. Contraceptive pill and abortion were not words we were familiar with. Sex education was non-existent. As far as we knew, sex led to pregnancy and we Catholic girls were made fully aware that pregnancy would break our mothers’ hearts and ruin our lives forever. I don’t recall the boys being given the same warning. No, it was up to us girls to ‘be good’. This mentality would continue right up until our late teens, leaving us illequipped to deal with the real world when we eventually entered it. Fear is a powerful tool.

This was the country where from 1920 right up until 1998, unmarried mothers were forced to seek refuge at homes run by the state and church when they had nowhere else to turn. Homes with appalling infant mortality and where the children who did survive were then put up for adoption without their mother’s consent. Women were second-class citizens, with zero autonomy over their own lives.

Sound familiar?

Abortion didn’t become legal in the Republic until 2018, with Northern Ireland decriminalising it in 2019, yet even now, there, and here in the UK, abortion services remain embedded with legislative landmines. The new laws are designed to make it look like we have made progress, but women are still being made to jump through hoops at one of the most traumatic times of their lives.

And as women the world over reeled in the aftermath of America’s bombshell, here in London, another woman was murdered by a stranger while walking home. She was ten minutes from her house. Her name was Zara Aleena. She was a 35-yearold law graduate. A 29-year-old man has been charged with her murder. She was walking home.

Sarah Everard was walking home. Sabina Nessa was walking to meet a friend.

Aisling Murphy was going for a run, in broad daylight at 4pm. And even if she had gone for a run at 2am, she should’ve been able to do that without being murdered. Night or day, short skirts and heels or leggings and runners, drunk or sober, there is no difference. We have the right to go about our lives, to not be restricted to curfews and certain clothing so as to ensure our daily survival. It is not our job to stop male violence.

When I think back to the amount of times I’ve walked home from work or a night out, blissfully unaware that this simple act alone could result in my death. I have always felt safe in Bristol, my route familiar.

Women should be able to walk alone without fear of attack.

Women should be able to choose whether or not to have a baby.

I want to be hopeful about the kind of world my daughter will be growing up in, but right now all I feel is fear and fury.