Pro-choice graffiti appears on York St as supreme court hears NI women are ‘second class citizens’

‘If abortions are murder then blowjobs are cannibalism’


Pro-life graffiti which appeared on York St earlier this week has been defaced, updated, and improved with a pro-choice alternative. The original graffiti read ‘abortion is murder’ but was updated with ‘if abortion is murder then blowjobs are cannibalism’.

The photo was posted in the Facebook group Feminist Forum Belfast, where it was praised by grateful bystanders. One woman wrote: “I saw this on my way home last night and I was raging”.

It’s well timed too. Yesterday, in a supreme court hearing on abortion rights in Northern Ireland, the court heard how women here were “second class citizens”. The case at the centre of the hearing was a 15-year-old girl, A, who had paid £900 to travel to Manchester with her mother for an abortion.

If A’s case succeeds it could revolutionise care for women in Northern Ireland, and could open the possibility for them to be permitted abortions on the NHS in England. A argues that the Secretary of State for Health is currently failing in his duty of care to “meet all reasonable requirements” in England for services – which include abortion.

She also points out that her human rights have been breached by being treated differently from other women in England.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) reported that in the last year alone 833 women were forced to travel to England and Wales for abortion, as it remains illegal in Northern Ireland.