[Guest post] by Emma Rogan: ‘Women Hurt’ posters

Emma Rogan wrote this article on her own blog here, and she can be found on twitter here.

If you travel by train or bus or walk through an Irish city, you’re likely to have seen the posters from the Women Hurt.ie website. The website claims to be “a project initiated by women who regret their abortions and wish to share their stories of hope and healing with women who find themselves in similar situations”.

My interest was spurred on by an online discussion so I took a look around the google-box and made a few connections. Here goes:

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• It seems one of the spokeswomen, Bernadette Goulding, is part of Rachel’s Vineyard, an organisation that holds retreats for women who’ve had abortions. It looks all very healing and all but there is a lot of emphasis put on Jesus, GOD and the other church-made all-powerful patriarchs. Rachel’s Vineyard http://www.rachelsvineyard.ie
• There is a big GOD aspect to it, perhaps because it is run by Priests for Life (http://www.priestsforlife.org). On this site you can view aborted foetuses, join the worldwide anti-choice campaign, get dvds to show in your local schools, churches and all sorts of other places *sigh*
• Obviously Fr. Frank Pavone’s (chief ‘doer’ at Priests for Life and Chair of Rachel’s Vineyard) GOD holds very wealthy, anti-choice purse-strings. The organisation seems to have a large number of staff, huge amounts of money and they are VERY determined that women in Ireland don’t have access to abortion in this country.
• Priests for Life is also attempting to sue President Obama over the new healthcare guidelines.
• Last year (2011) Frank Pavone was called back to ministry in Amarillo after his bishop Patrick Zurek got very annoyed about the lack of financial transparency and accountability of the group (PFL) (Full text of letter here).
  “The financial questions and concerns have persisted with no clear and adequate answers since the time when Father Pavone was under two previous bishop ordinaries,” Zurek wrote. PFL had sums of more than $10 million slushing through their coffers.
• MORE information on this VERY wealthy organisationhttp://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=841
• The posters have been seen in Connolly, Heuston, McDonnagh and Kent stations.
• And finally, if you’ve managed to read thus far….a very good site to keep tabs on what the others are up to is Right Wing Watch. They watch all the craziness, condense it and make it readable for us pinkos http://www.rightwingwatch.org
• Know thyself but also, know thine enemy.

Meanwhile, back on the ‘Ol sod, women are getting on a plane tonight/in the morning, will check-in to a hospital, feel worse than awful and have the brutal Irish gombeen-system of law to thank for it. By the way, did I mention there is the possibility that Fr. Frank Pavone’s organisation is indirectly paying for these posters to make women who have had/will have abortions feel all the more awful? Ah lads, lassies agus na daoine eile, when will we Irish ever grow up, take responsibility for ourselves and actually be adults about sexuality and abortion?

Remember, sometimes there’s nothing a can of touch-up/spray paint can’t fix.