Sometimes we are sent a friend who is so cosmically aligned that we have 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 NIO twitter, when Covid prevented abortion travel, to being invited to the Queens house for tea 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 and RSE.
As well as all of the lobbying and campaigning, she spent hours on the phone to people scared by Stanton, worried about what to do and how to do access abortion or even women who were struggling alone with no one else to confide in.
Naomi was the safe space for the thousands of women and pregnant people. She was reassuring, funny, pragmatic, listening 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 don’t need as much info from us, 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. 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 helping me wheat-paste 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.
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.
Nothing would be more delicious to me than when we were sat with some high falutin’ scoundrel and Naomi told him exactly what do with his big solemn face. I’ve been struggling all day 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 mostest, belted out press releases with me and Danielle at lightning speed, or 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 at the MAC together, so brilliant when she came up with her costumes for the Array Collective Melt Gala and the Druthaib’s Ball film. Having a woman like Naomi by your side is doubly annoying for anyone we were trying to provoke. Double trouble!
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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