Let Us Be Seen: Pro-choice activism in Northern Ireland

In the context of Roe vs. Wade being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, pro-choice activism takes on a weighty significance. Visiting scholar Elspeth Vischer provides insight from her home country of Northern Ireland.

Vischer is a filmmaker and fourth year PhD Student at Queen’s University in Belfast, where she also runs a small creative production company called Vish Films.

Vischer is visiting Fredericton’s University of New Brunswick (UNB) campus and the New Brunswick Film Co-op as the recipient of a prestigious Eaton Scholarship. She is collaborating with the NB Film Co-op’s director and filmmaker Tony Merzetti, and Dr. Sabine LeBel, from UNB’s Department of Culture and Media Studies. The goal of these scholarships is to team up with an academic in Canada and demonstrate how a scholar might work collaboratively to develop their own research.

Vischer’s PhD research is about analysing and documenting the development of grassroots feminism in Belfast. During her research, she included her creative practice which was directing a feature-length documentary film about this topic, titled Let Us Be Seen.

The context of Vischer’s documentary film is the prelude and aftermath to the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland on October 21, 2019. It is extraordinarily timely given the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent reversal of abortion rights in the U.S.

Although abortion has been legal in Britain since 1967, Northern Ireland never respected this decision. In fact, the Stormont Assembly, Northern Ireland’s governing body, passed a motion to oppose the 1967 British law which restricted access to people whose lives were in danger or whose mental or physical health was at risk of permanent and/or serious damage. This forced even more people to seek out abortions in Britain, prompted court challenges, and sparked the creation of the first private clinic in Belfast in 2012.

The 2019 decriminalisation, an historic event, happened thanks to direct intervention from the British Parliament and resulted in lively protest from the ruling Democratic Unionist Party which remains rightwing and anti-abortion.

In her research and film on these social movements, Vischer’s focus is on the ways different non-governmental organizations mobilize in terms of co-operatives, charities and new entrepreneurial ventures under the facets of activism, education and arts. Her documentary film features interviews with grassroots feminist, trans and pro-choice activists and footage from the 2019 mobilization in Northern Ireland.

For example, a coalition of 36 feminist, union and social justice groups formed an organization called Now for Northern Ireland to advocate for abortion rights.

A public screening and Q&A for Vischer’s feature documentary will be held on Thursday, July 7 at 7:00 PM in Room 143 at UNB’s D’Avray Hall, 10 MacKay Dr., Fredericton (free parking on campus). The NB Film Co-op will also be hosting a workshop with Vischer about her filmmaking process and insights entitled Documenting the Grassroots via Zoom on Thursday, July 14 at 7:00 PM (register by contacting: info@nbfilmcoop.com).

Sophie M. Lavoie is an editorial board member of the NB Media Co-op. With files from Elspeth Vischer.