A few quick links from Friday’s Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion. I’ll add more links later today. Let me know of any events, articles, posts, videos etc., produced for the day.
Nikki shared a powerful letter she wrote to the Labour Women’s caucus.
Family Planning urged the government to take abortion out of the Crimes Act, and, together with ALRANZ and Women’s Health Action, published a fact sheet asking the hard questions about abortion law in New Zealand about abortion law in New Zealand.
There were some great protests and demonstrations across the globe, including a large march in Dublin and yesterday there was a flash mob in Melbourne (I’m not sure if that was connected to the Sept 28 campaign but it was this weekend and it was awesome, so I’m including it here).
And to wrap things up, this video produced by IPAS Brazil a few years ago seems very appropriate.
Thanks for the round-up. Every time I talk to someone not directly involved in prochoice in Aotearoa-NZ, they express surprise: Oh, I thought we had good laws in NZ; gee, I didn’t know abortion was still a crime; heck I though NZers had the right to choose etc. It’s a testament to the work of abortion care providers that this is the impression most people have. But that don’t make it right. I endorse Nikki’s call (see link above) for some political leadership on this from one/some of our elected reps. There ARE people like Nikki and others working hard on this who could use some support from those of you who are paid to be political (those in the prochoice movement do it for free, just in case you thought we were paid!!). Or are you all going to wait until Right to Life finally wins one of its court cases and abortion access is shut down and we have to fire up Sisters Overseas Service to help get women to Oz or start ordering dubious abortion meds over the Net before you do anything?