Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This day next week, 8 March, is International Women's Day. This year will be different because women all over the world will participate in co-ordinated actions against sexism and for reproductive rights. For the first time in history there has been a call for a global strike on International Women's Day. Participants are asked to strike, to either take a day off work or wear black, as I am doing today, and to assemble to demand rights that are being denied. There will be a huge focus on this country because the strike will centre on the need for repeal of one of the cruelest abortion bans in the world.

Three events will take place next week. On Monday, the Bus 4 Repeal will travel, providing access to safe medical abortion pills that are banned in this country but are considered essential medicine by the WHO. On Wednesday, the Strike 4 Repeal will assemble at 12.30 p.m. on O'Connell Bridge and a march for repeal will take place at 5.30 p.m., which is organised by the Coalition to Repeal the Eight Amendment. The coalition is made up of a huge number of groups, including the National Women's Council and others.

The Taoiseach's failure to hold a referendum to repeal the eight amendment has been raised with him many times. It does not look like we will get anything different from his two potential replacements because there has been generational change in attitudes on abortion and while there will be generational change in the Fine Gael leadership it does not look like there will be generational change on abortion. The Taoiseach's two apprentices are old heads on young shoulders. They are still stuck in the past on this issue and neither of them believe in women's bodily autonomy, which means they are very divorced from the generation they represent. In Ireland, the movement's hashtag is "We Won't Wait". The mantra from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and now the Independents is that women should just dutifully wait for the Citizens' Assembly to give its verdict but in the real world crisis pregnancies continue. Does the Taoiseach have advice for a young woman who sent a message to my Facebook page yesterday?

Please help me with advice if u can. I'm in a really really bad situation. I can't sleep at night with worry... I've taken so much time off work because all I do is cry... every day... It's destroying me and I feel so trapped... I'm at a dead end with this pregnancy. My partner was so violent and he's completely abandoned me.

What is the Taoiseach's advice to that woman? Is it to suck it up and wait for the Citizens' Assembly? Women and young people are not prepared to wait any longer for bishops to pontificate at the Citizens' Assembly, as they will next week. Young people who will march next week will not be told and tone policed. Why did it take only two and half years for the so-called pro-life amendment campaign to get a referendum that nobody wanted and that was sectarian and mediaeval but five years after the death of Savita Halappanavar in October 2012, we still do not have a referendum to repeal the eighth amendment? Can the Taoiseach tell us why that is?

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