MY BODY MY CHOICE: Should You Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries?

MY BODY MY CHOICE: Should You Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries?

• Thursday, 24 May 2018

Last year, I remember being sat in a toilet cubicle in an Irish airport and seeing a message scribbled on the door – “I’m pregnant n scared,” it said.

Desperation screaming silently in Sharpie. Shame relegated to toilet graffiti. Echoes of sleepless nights spelt out in secret anonymity.

Without going much further, I think you can guess where I stand on this issue. Like, I'm not crying out to keep your rosaries off my ovaries. It’s not the point I'm getting at today.

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From old Kitchen-Sink-Realism dramas to hospital documentaries, from Ancient Roman art right up to ‘Call the Midwife’, the idea of being “pregnant n scared” is hardly new. In fact, abortion is as ancient a practice as pregnancy by all accounts: you only need to look to the history books. Ancient Egyptians had the Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus. Medieval English women used Tansy. Thuja, safflower, scotch broom, wormwood, yarrow – the examples are almost endless.

And then you get to the stuff we shiver at. We squeeze our eyes shut and purse our lips at the mention of the word ‘alleyway.’ Our shoulders tense when we see the word ‘gin-bath.’ ‘Coat-hanger.’

I don’t want to talk about the effects of these methods. What’s important to talk about is that they existed. They continue to exist. Ancient art, herbal recipes, dramas written in the height of the sexual revolution all show how women have desired to control their own bodies since the beginning of documentation. It’s hardly a modern revelation. Irish women today are throwing themselves down stairs; they are drinking bleach and overdosing on pain killers – but so did their predecessors.

Abortion is not the product of a new relatively sexually liberated society. It is the product of a powerful desire to be a master of choice. To decide what happens to your own body.  

I’m not writing to persuade you to swing your vote one way or another. Vote yes, no, whatever. Just know this: Abortion is going to happen regardless of how you vote on Friday. It has always happened. It always will. No amount of ‘No’ votes can change that.

But a ‘Yes’ vote can take desperate women out of dangerous situations. It will begin the process of making amends to the ladies whose bodies are not their own in the eyes of the law. It will begin to erase the scared toilet door scribbles once and for all, one cubicle at a time.