A strange thing happened this summer after the Irish people voted to repeal the eighth amendment to our constitution, knowing that this would pave the way for legislation allowing women to have abortions in this country. To describe it, you need to know about a slogan feminists used to chant at marches when we were campaigning for reproductive rights. “Get your rosaries off our ovaries,” we’d yell, imagining both the prayers and the chains of beads over which they are intoned.
The results of the referendum, in which two out of every three voters said yes, elated and overjoyed us. But there was a physical sensation, too. It took me a while and some discussion with friends to identify it – for they felt it as well. A lightness. It could, we realised, be precisely described. It was the absence of rosaries on our ovaries. We had been shackled. We’d broken free.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2wcR6pM
via
0 Comments