I have a vivid memory, and a treasured one, of sitting in a cafe in Belfast, looking south, beaming with pride. I just happened to be down there, for a WordCamp in fact, on the day that the Republic of Ireland held its “repeal the Eighth” referendum on its constitutional provision which, in the name of banning abortion, also banned essential, immediate, and lifesaving reproductive health care. Ireland’s deeply religious legacy had demanded that as the norm for decades, and so it was.

But the catalyst for the referendum, after so many decades of people just accepting that norm, was Savita. She was a healthy, 31-year-old, happily married woman who, through no fault of her own, miscarried her desperately wanted baby, just 17 weeks in. Miscarriage doesn’t just mean that the pregnancy is no longer viable. It means that the baby transfigures into poison. If the miscarried foetus is not removed, it becomes a toxin that kills its mother from the inside out. Which is why Savita, a medical professional who knew how this all worked, presented at A&E in agonising pain, expecting urgent medical care. But technically the unviable foetus still had a heartbeat. So the hospital made Savita lie in a hospital bed, dialated, for three days, waiting for her to pass the dead foetus naturally, so that the hospital would not break the eighth amendment. Three days. Of course, by that time, she’d gone septic. That hospital was where, and why, Savita died at 31, a week after coming in for a basic emergency procedure which should have seen her sleeping in her own bed that same night.

There was something about her death – perhaps it was social media? perhaps it was her integrity and vulnerability? perhaps it was just the changing times? – which broke the spell that the eighth amendment had held for so long. Mná na hÉireann are a force of nature, and the government was pushed to take it to a referendum.

As I enjoyed my coffee – and Belfast does great coffee – I scrolled through the Irish Times’ live blog as the day progressed, almost physically feeling the power of their sheer will pushing outward. What finally brought the tears was seeing many of the women making a pilgrimage to a mural of Savita after they voted, so that they could honour her in whatever ways felt right,

as if voting Yes to repeal was not already the highest honour they could offer.

Savita’s mural, the day after the referendum. Photo by Zcbeaton, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s morning in America, as someone once said, and you’re as sleep deprived as I am. A little bit ragged and emotional too. Which means you’re probably wondering what a six-year-old anecdote from Ireland has to do with anything.

Sadly, it’s everything.

For the voting women of Ireland, Savita was a role model in the worst way: an exemplar of what cannot and must not ever be allowed to happen. She was also a call for women to look after each others’ backs, and wombs too.

It pains me to report that yesterday the voting women of America, and many men too, adopted her as a role model as well, but not as a force for good. They have no intention of having other women’s backs. They want Savita as an exemplar of what can, and should, happen to women every day, everywhere.

They want more dead women, they are already getting them, and they are not going to stop until no one knows their names because there are too many to count.

(That dead American girl’s name, for what it’s worth, was Neveah. That’s “heaven” spelled backwards. Christian Nationalism does not do irony, or for that matter actual Christianity.)

But does the result of America’s presidential election mean anything for you, not in America, just working on your thing, whether that’s law, policy, regulation, or code?

Yes it does. It means you’re the Mná na hÉireann now. You’ve got to look out for women, and have each others’ backs, and wombs.

So what can you do, after you get a decent night’s sleep?

Zero.

Your new foundational principle is end-to-end encryption. On everything. Full stop.

If you are communicating with someone on a non-encrypted DM, such as certain apps or X, fucking stop it now. Stop being a walking threat model. Stop exposing others to risk.

First.

Grab a notebook. A physical one, like conference swag. (You’d better get used to that.) Make a table that looks like this.

Now watch this. It’s only 90 seconds long.

That video is how things are going to work for the next few years.

So fill out your table with all of issues which that video presents. If you don’t know the answers, do your research.

In the row that says “my work”, think of how your work could become part of that video without you even realising it.

Second.

Now that you’ve had the warmup, revisit the learning exercise I set forth in September about reproductive privacy. I meant it as a conference talk challenge, but we don’t have time for that anymore, so I’ll just repeat the exercise here:

And third.

Third is that whatever age you are, if you are biologically capable of conceiving, consensually or not, and/or are therefore capable of miscarrying, you would be a fool to even set foot in America for the foreseeable future. And by “fool” I mean “stupid fucking idiot”. Don’t. It’s not worth it. Forget business trips, forget company meetups, forget conferences, forget holidays, forget fucking Disneyworld, forget gigs, forget sporting competitions, forget everything. Just forget it.

For that matter, forget your friends and relatives: after all, people who really care about you don’t put you at physical risk, nor do they care about your long term physical absence either. They can come see you, over here. You don’t have to go there. If that’s not possible, switch back to seeing them on Zoom. Goodness knows we had enough practice with that, after all.

If you walk alone and unprotected through a dark street at night, no one has any sympathy for you for what happens next. America has chosen to be a dark street at night. You’ll live just fine without it. You might not if you choose otherwise.

There’s so much more to come and so many things we all have to do but this is day one. Start.

Tá, Savita.