Alliance for Choice
Free, Safe, Legal, Local Abortion For Everyone Who Needs It
Photo by: Ciara McMullan, Melt Gala
REST IN POWER
Naomi Connor, Alliance for Choice Legend…
Sometimes we are sent a friend who is so cosmically aligned that we have no option but to hitch our wagons.
When Naomi came into the Alliance for Choice fold, I was so ready for her energy, her glam and her fight. From being blocked by the Northern Ireland Office twitter, when Covid prevented abortion travel, to being invited to the Queens house for tea by the same office the following year, there should be nothing that surprised people about Naomi’s life and legacy.
Naomi had charm, poise wisdom, fierceness, and a fashion sense of ‘more is more’. Simultaneously she was deadly serious about abortion, VAWG, and sustained activism across multiple fights from Palestine to Trans rights to migrant rights.
Naomi was a safe space and a listening ear for hundreds of women and pregnant people directly over the years. She was an indirect source of support through her endless advocacy and campaigning. She was reassuring for people, she was open-hearted, funny, pragmatic, and she was also a protected place people could leave their often complex feelings about abortion with. Some people will remember her by name, some people will know her from her accompanying them to appointments, buying abortion after-care packages, giving them lifts or just keeping them nattering - if lots of noise is what they needed, or a quiet hand on the shoulder if that was more their way. When someone presented with a pressing need, Naomi was immediately into her unique problem solving mode.
I remember the celebrations and gratitude on the day of decriminalisation at the Assembly, when she pivoted to becoming a guerilla activist by wheat-pasting Irish and internationally known abortion activists on to the street walls around Belfast. She has projected on to the heinous anti choice clinic in Belfast, sold feminist handmade homeware and apparel, she has spoken to schools about abortion and to Secretary of States about her menopause. She has organised clothes swaps and breast casts, doula training and Pro Choice Markets, she has charmed funders and rightly annoyed the DUP amongst many other shades of politician. As well as all of the lobbying and campaigning, she spent hours on the phone to people after being scared by the anti-choicers in Stanton, worried about what to do and how to access abortion or even women who were struggling alone with no one else to confide in. There’s a gorgeous tree in memory of Savita Halappanavar installed in the Women’s Tec site because of Naomi.
Nothing would be more delicious to me than when we were sat with some high falutin’ political scoundrel and Naomi told him exactly what do with his nonsense, no holds barred. I’ve been struggling to try and describe what it is like to lose someone who you joined for a wee hours snack in Glastonbury’s Strumpets with Crumpets, after working a leg melting bar shift to raise money for Alliance for Choice. Someone who bought your wee one the absolute BIGGEST toys, out-whackied you for the headdress with the biggest, barbie-strewn tiara, belted out press releases with me and Danielle at lightning speed, or quickly found that solution for the migrant women or the coercively tracked woman, or the teenager who was terrified or the granny who was also terrified. She was so generous to do the breast cancer shoot for the MAC project, so brilliant when she came up with her costumes for the Array Collective Melt Gala and the Druthaib’s Ball film and so amazing to conceive and produce the Body Politic project.
Importantly - at least 3 women a week since decrim have been helped by Naomi personally through our accompaniment project, even with our amazing new abortion laws, people still fall through the cracks or need someone to think through their options with.
Having a woman like Naomi on your side is amazing because you get to see the best of what feminist, honest and caring power can achieve. Everyone that needed an abortion in NI had Naomi on their side, whether they knew it or not.
I hope wherever her spirit is, they’ve had the good sense to provide a walk in wardrobe and a wee glass of something.
REST IN POWER NAOMI,
Emma - Alliance for Choice
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