Ruth Coppinger speaks at pro-choic rally at the Dail

The accepted invitation to visit Britain in September 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI has afforded the Vatican a major platform to promote their reactionary and bigoted ideology.

A significant feature of the thousands strong march on 29 September in Dublin to mark International Decriminalisation of Abortion Day was the number of young people, especially young women, who participated – young people who frequently make the point that they are shocked at the backward laws that exist in Ireland in the 21st century and who correctly feel that women should be afforded the basic right to choose when and if they have children.

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.