Repealers must do homework and let us do housework

The pro-abortion movement is in danger of turning into a farce with its threat to call a national strike, writes Barbara McCarthy

IWAS contemplating getting blue armpit hair implants and taking a day off work to support my sisters in their quest to have abortions at home, but, unfortunately, I’m a single parent and I can’t afford to bunk off willy-nilly.

In an effort to push the Government to call a referendum, the privileged, inexperienced, misandric pro-abortion movement is calling on us to down tools, wear black and get local businesses to shut up shop.

“We have one demand,” a young girl in a promotional video for Strike4Repeal exclaimed of the movement’s raison d’etre. “Call a referendum before the 8th of March or there will be a national strike... Thousands of people took time off work last year to access abortions — we are asking you to show your solidarity with them,” another one said.

A thought crossed my mind immediately. Are you having a laugh? The pro-abortion movement is starting to eat itself. You want me to go to my local vegetable shop and ask the owner not to trade for the day, as he struggles for business sandwiched between two German discount giants. Also — quick but necessary newsflash — if you had an abortion at home, you’d still have to take the day off work.

My favourite request is the one where Strike4Repealers are calling on citizens not to partake in domestic chores. Fair enough. Kids around Ireland will go to school hungry on foot because their mums went back to bed in a repeal jumper, standing up for the rights of unborn foetuses.

No victim of rape or a mother suffering the unspeakable tragedy of a child with fatal foetal abnormalities should ever have to travel to the UK for an abortion, but protesting about the unimaginable horror of having to get an hour’s flight to terminate an unwelcome pregnancy makes a mockery of real injustices to our race, like female genital mutilation, rape and annihilation around the world.

You could almost think women were being sent to Goldenbridge.

When we do have accessible abortions in Ireland, women will be horrified to find that they will still endure trauma when they have abortions.

Strike4Repeal is taking place on International Women’s Day and there are so many other worthy causes we could strike for. Why not strike in support of female Chinese Falun Gong practitioners, tens of thousands of whom have their organs removed illegally to facilitate a burgeoning organ transplant industry? Yes, this crime against humanity is happening in our world and no one seems too bothered about it. Or Saudi Arabian women, Indian child brides, or victims of Boko Haram terror? The list is long. I feel bad, I don’t do enough, but there is just so much persecution towards women it’s difficult to focus.

The Repeal the Eighth movement is angry, shouty, staggeringly exclusive, narcissistic, and it’s getting dangerously close to being farcical.

It’s also giving me abortion fatigue.

I’ve had it since I covered the inauguration of Donald Trump in Washington in January, where the women’s march was more or less a white women for abortion march. All I could see were posters of reproductive organs.

Amidst a sea of fallopian tubes, there was a chorus of people chanting in unison “this is what democracy looks like”, with women wearing T-shirts stating: ‘I can’t believe I’m still protesting this shit.’

Neither can I. I was thinking ‘you’re walking down the street with a vagina on your head, surrounded by applauding men and you’re talking about wanting equality? I’m confused’.

Speaking of going on about shit... I can’t believe it’s been 34 years since I’ve been listening to proabortion campaigners, so Enda Kenny please call a referendum. Let’s make abortions legal in Ireland and then we can focus on some real issues.