I was in sixth year when first got into activism. It was the year of the Marriage Equality Referendum but due to the school workload wasn’t able to go out and campaign. That feeling of not being able to fight for my rights is what ended up politicising me. So when found out about the Repeal campaign in my first year of college, decided wanted to do something. began attending the Marches for Choice, carried out stunts based around the abortion pill with ROSA and other pro-choice groups, including a Handmaid’s protest outside the Dáil. started throwing myself into whatever was happening.
Ollie Bell Co-founder of Trans Pride Ireland
Photographs by Leandro Hernandez Jimenez.
It was very important to see that it wasn’t just politicians involved in the Repeal campaign, it was actual people who had gone through abortions or who were looking at the situation and saying ‘No this isn’t fair, we should do something about this’. It showed that we are at a point in Ireland where it is people power pushing movements forward and creating change.