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      Our Heritage - Bernadette Devlin McAliskey


      Irish independence fighter and civil rights leader. In 1969, at 21, she was the youngest ever elected Member of Parliament, and sat as an independent socialist. She survived being shot 14 times in a British government-linked assasination attempt in 1981

      "The issue of repeal of the Eighth Amendment* is actually not even an issue about abortion. It is fundamentally in this case about abortion. But it is at its core, in the 21s Century, a demand that the last usurpation of authority of the individual human being, of human beings, be ended. That is the usurpation of a woman's right to control her own body. To exercise first and last authority over that individual body. All day. Every day that she is alive. Not simply when she is a pregnant woman.

      Let us be clear that the demand of the end of usurpation. The demand for our right to control out bodies. To make our own reproductive system is not a favour we are asking for certain circumstances. It is a fundamental defense of democracy for every person..."
      -March for Choice, September 30 2017.

      *The Eighth Amendment criminalized abortion in Ireland under all circumstances, except where the life of a pregnant woman was at risk. On May 25, 2018, after decades-long campaign led by Irish women, a referendum was passed overwhelmingly to delete the constitutional ban on abortion.





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