Photo by Mohammed Hijas on Unsplash
Repealing Ireland’s Eighth amendment is about removing decades of oppression Irish women and children have endured at the hands of the Catholic Church and the Irish State. Without retribution nor a conscience, these two institutions have systematically kept women at a disadvantage and sold and abused our children. Repealing the Eighth is a small, but vital, step toward unravelling the damage caused by years of lies, deceit, and denial.
In the early summer of 1982, just as I was about to turn 15, my classmates and I were sitting our Inter-Cert exams. Education systems vary across the globe, but back then, this set of state examinations were the first formal tests high-school kids in Ireland sat. Typically characterized by weeks of cramming while the sun is shining, tears, fears, late nights, the hopes for certain essay questions, mathematical proofs, and the dreams of being able to pull off a good still-life against the clock.
Of the two weeks or so the exams continue, one day sticks out, with a memory that nags at my conscience — the day of the music exam. I was my usual nervy self, particularly concerned about my ability to recognize a given piece of music when it was played. In those days, we didn’t have the technology to listen to the works of Bach on repeat — scratched LPs played on a turntable were our only exposure to the music we were supposed to know by heart.
Sitting in the back of the music room were a handful of girls around my age who weren’t from our school. They were sitting the exams just like me, seemingly nervous, just like I was.
The only visible difference between me and these other teenagers, was that each one of them was somewhere between five and nine months pregnant. The vision of one girl in particular still haunts me. She looked like she was wearing a nightdress, heavily pregnant and seemed to be in pain. I wondered how she could sit, let alone focus on the obscure tones of Claude Debussy.
Us local school kids had been instructed not to look, not to engage, not to talk. I refuse to repeat the words that were bandied around, disgusting words used to describe these young women. Heinous clichés uttered by the very nuns who were supposed to be taking care of these of young vulnerable girls, many abandoned by their families. The fear in my soul that day ensured that I didn’t talk to any of them, I too, like everyone else in Ireland, turned my back.
To all of you young girls who experienced this torture, in this case at the hands of the nuns of the Good (seriously) Shepherd Convent in Dunboyne, I hang my head in shame. I am sorry for not showing you the shred of decency that remained locked inside of me.
Repealing the Eighth is about removing those chains of fear.
Fear served as the insurance policy for the nuns and the priests of Ireland and the barbaric institution they belong to. Fear was the mechanism ensuring people were kept in their places. It ensured that my newly-widowed grandmother paid her dues to the church. She worked three jobs to feed and clothe five children. Yet the church saw fit to take her money to ensure her husband’s name was mentioned during the service on Sunday — knowing she feared the scorn of her neighbors more than an empty dinner table.
We lived in an era of self-perpetuating damnation. Starting with the church ensuring that State opposition to contraceptives — not even condoms — remained firm. The sense of shame, preached from the altar, causing parents to abandon their own children into the ‘care’ of mother-and-baby-homes. That we could even call these centers of horror as such makes me weep. The enslavement of women, baby-making machines, who once married were no longer welcome into the workplace. The fear of excommunication for getting an education at my own Alma Mater, Trinity College Dublin. All providing the church with a constant flow of children to abuse and pregnant young women whose babies could be sold. And so it went on.
While international media was sobbing over the tragic case of Ann Lovett (15) who died shortly after giving birth in a field, my English teacher/preacher Sr. Anna (who incidentally worked at the Dunboyne institution), reminded us what of happens to young girls. No compassion for a young girl’s dilemma. Just pure damnation! Right on the back of the abortion referendum, which brought the Eighth into existence, you might wonder what we were thinking back then — I was unfortunately too young to vote at the time. But as is often the case with Irish politics, the facts were muddled with emotions, women were hailed as murderers and witches, and the poor innocent babies — yes, the poor innocent babies that the church would no longer be able to sell if people had a choice.
This referendum is not about abortion, it is not about the rights of the unborn child, it is not about what you believe in or what you don’t. It’s not even about providing women with the freedom to decide over their own bodies. This referendum is about removing the shackles of fear that the church and the Irish State have used to keep Ireland’s women and children enslaved.
Save the date, be sure to vote. Repeal the Eighth.
dpdoyle 