Ruth Coppinger speaks at Savita protest

Unsurprisingly, the Bill proposed by Socialist Party / United Left Alliance TD, Clare Daly to legislate for the X Case, was overwhelming defeated in the Dail. The establishment fail yet again; women suffer, and working class and economically deprived women who can’t or find it difficult to muster the money to travel to access a termination, and migrant women and women trapped in abusive relationships who have restrictions on their travel, suffer most acutely.

The Bill that Socialist Party TD Clare Daly and Deputies Joan Collins and Mick Wallace have written and brought forward to the Dáil coincides with the 20th anniversary of the X Case, when a 14 year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by a neighbour was prevented by the High Court from travelling to England for an abortion. Two weeks later, after massive public pressure and protests, the Supreme Court upheld her right to an abortion in England on the basis that her life was threatened because of the risk of suicide.

In July, French president Nicolas Sarkozy began a blatantly racist policy of systematic deportation of Roma people residing in France. So far over 1,200 have been deported. A leaked memo from the French interior ministry confirms the racist nature of this policy, telling police chiefs to “begin a systematic dismantling of the illegal camps, particularly those of the Roma”.