One thing we pride ourselves on in Her.ie is building a loyal readership.
We value the relationship we have with our users. We share your stories, we laugh at the same things and we attempt to represent your interest.
Earlier this year we made an attempt to understand your views on some of this countries pivotal issues through our
Slice of Ireland survey.
Few things shocked us, we know you that well. We know your social media habits, your likes, dislikes and guilty pleasures.
Some things upset us. Your body image isn’t great and we’re working on bringing you content to help you think differently about that.
We knew the marriage referendum would pass before it did because you told us you would vote Yes.
When you told us these things we’ve remained impartial. The old souls in us value journalism ethics and we wanted to remain objective.
But we’re changing that now. Back then 77% of you told us you believed abortion should be legalized in Ireland. That’s just over ¾ of our audience and in the interest of fairness we’ve stayed fairly stump on the issue. We haven’t commented publicly about it but we’ve shared stories from women of all ages about the issue. We’ve created a
Tearing Down Taboo series to broadcast the voices of the faceless women who have been affected by the absence of safe and legal abortion in this country.
And we’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned that no two instances are the same. We’ve encountered very few situations where abortion was an easy choice. In most cases, the decision to procure an abortion was one that was laden with sadness, remorse and disappointment. And in every instance, it has been noted that this decision has been made even more trying with the added expense, stress and criminalization of having to travel abroad.
Our individual opinions and experiences of abortion are much more astute. We will, in time, debate these and share them in further exploration of the issue. We will of course continue to cover both sides of the argument. But for what its worth, we support #repealthe8th.
We believe women have the capabilities to make their own decisions. We believe safe legal abortion should be made available for all women.
We know we’ll get some backlash for this. Maybe it’s irresponsible. But at the end of the day, what’s most important to us is our relationship with you and on this issue, we want you to know, we’re on your side.
If you’d like to participate in any of our abortion debates, our Tearing Down Taboo series or Her Say, please contact Cassie.Delaney@her.ie
