The 8th: Toxic shame continues to haunt women years after Tuam horrors

As a woman listening, it was so wounding to realise what little value your country has in you, writes Alison O’Connor.

The absurdity of being a female in today’s Ireland struck forcibly while I sat listening to the Citizens’ Assembly last Saturday morning. This personal moment occurred just prior to the Assembly hearing the harrowing testimony of six Irish women with firsthand experience of the eighth amendment.

A legal expert was speaking about the Constitutional protection we provide to the unborn. Needless to say, it was a further torment for the poor Assembly members expected to make some sense of the legal quagmire which surrounds this issue and about which, as they now know so well, there is no certainty.