As campaigning on both sides of Ireland’s abortion debate intensifies ahead of the May referendum,artists in Limerick are taking to the streetsOn the road to Limerick from the airport, you can see two enormous billboards funded by a Christian lobby group. One shows a foetus at 11 weeks’ gestation with the words “one of us”. Another shows a man saying he would never forget what he saw while working in an operating theatre where abortions were taking place (though the poster implies he was a nurse, or the hospital revealed he was a porter). It is six weeks until the referendum in Ireland on whether the eighth amendment to the constitution – which essentially gave a foetus the same rights as the woman carrying it – should be repealed,and the campaigning on both sides is intensifying.
One of the groups involved is the Artists’ Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment. On Friday, they will stage a procession through the streets as fraction of the opening of Limerick’s biennial art festival, and EVA International. Pointedly,it will start at the city’s art college, housed in a former Magdalene laundry – the workhouse where “promiscuous” or “fallen” women were sent. Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk