Last month, more than 100 anti-abortion protesters arrived at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow to be met with a formidable opposition: just behind their usual gathering spot the railings had been converted into a huge, multi-coloured mural made up of banners peppered with irreverent messages such as “No womb for your opinion”, “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries” and “Yer da protests abortion”. There were recurring visual motifs, many used in abortion rights campaigns for decades, such as a cartoon uterus giving the finger, wearing a sombrero (“Nacho uterus, nacho business”), or gleefully booting a foetus. Within a day, images of the protest and its flamboyant backdrop were splashed across Scottish newspapers.
The creative counter-protest caught the attention of Glasgow Women’s Library, which collects banners, badges and other ephemera from across the women’s liberation movement, many predating the organisation’s founding in 1991. You’ll find beautiful placards and pins there, from the original abortion rights movement of the 1970s to the Repeal the 8th campaign to lift the abortion ban in Ireland. When they saw the colourful displays from the recent Glasgow protests, they agreed to archive many of the protest materials as important social-historical documents and artworks in their own right.
