The Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution is the reason I had to leave Ireland and travel to the UK when I needed an abortion. I was 18, in a relationship and the contraception we were using failed. The Eighth Amendment was voted for in 1983 after contraception had been made legal in Ireland in 1980. The conservative forces, accustomed to locking away women and girls like me in mother and baby homes and Magdalene laundries, were worried that abortion would become legal too.

So they put pressure on politicians to insert a clause into the constitution which would make abortion legal only if there is a direct threat to a pregnant person’s life, ruling out abortion being made legal in cases of rape or in instances of fatal foetal abnormality, while compromising the wellbeing and medical consent of all pregnant people in Ireland.

The Eighth Amendment has caused suffering for hundreds of thousands of women all over Ireland. I know I am one of at least 170,000 who travelled to the UK and gave an Irish address. Not all of us do, some give a friend or family member’s UK address or some travel to the Netherlands. Women who until very recently didn’t share their stories.

To change attitudes and laws when abortion is illegal, it takes women standing up and telling their truth – that they had an abortion. With abortion having been so heavily stigmatised here in Ireland, it has taken a lot of courage to do so, especially when having one at home (which people do by ordering pills online) currently carries a 14-year criminal sentence.

I’d bet, these days, shortly after reading the headlines, you’ve thought, shaking your head and muttering, something like: “Jesus. We live in an age of impossibly catastrophic stupid.”

You’re not wrong. About a decade or so ago, hot on the heels of the financial crisis, something happened — an old story began to be rewritten, as the world found itself poorer once again. There was an explosion, somewhere deep in the human heart, and a tsunami rippled across the globe — one boiling and bubbling with every imaginable variety of stupid: human folly, gleeful ignorance, self-destructive greed, reckless spite, dim-witted cruelty parading itself as enlightenment.

And so now a tsunami of imbecility is rolling like a slow-motion thermonuclear bomb across the globe. Lightning bolts of foolishness shiver down it. Smoke clouds of idiocy billow from it. Here are the five kinds of stupid wrecking the globe — because your first job, these days, as a human being, is to make sure you’re not being turned into an imbecile by this wave of stupid, too.

Economic stupid is nationalism, populism, or austerity, three words that craftily mean the same thing. It’s the idea that “we don’t have the money to pay for it!!”, whether “it” is school lunches, healthcare, education, parks, libraries, media, or trains. Sure we have the money. What do you think an era of zero interest rates mean? It means that there is so much money sloshing around in the treasure chests of the global economy, so much loot piled up by Jeff Bezoses and Bill Gateses, that there is nowhere left to put it. Not a single place: all the yachts, super mansions, and trophy castles have been bought. Nada left to buy equals zilch interest to lend at. Zero interest doesn’t just means “societies can borrow for better than free and give everyone healthcare, education, an income, and savings” — it means that if they don’t, the economy will go right on cruising into oblivion, because that money will go on piling at the top, instead of doing anything remotely useful, beneficial, or necessary.

SHARON – Leadership on the Mercer County Democrat Committee is split over whether the party has been locked out of its headquarters on Vine Avenue, even though the property’s owner has posted an eviction notice on the door of the building.

Diane Syphrit and Mercer County Commissioner Tim McGonigle, who won seats on the state Democratic Committee according to unofficial results from Tuesday’s election, said that the headquarters’ locks at 16 Vine Ave. in downtown Sharon had been changed, a contention that county Democrat chairman Ryan Mergl disputes.

“No, the locks were not changed,” Mergl said. “Tim is full of misinformation because he never comes around, by the way.”

The small office space on Vine Avenue, across from Mergl’s law practice, is in a building owned by HomeTown Community Rentals.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the Democratic leader of a city with 75 miles of coastline, immigrants from around the world and the Kardashians, is considering running for president in 2020. But first he would have to make it through Iowa. On a recent visit, he did his best to connect, playing up everything his city shares with the rural, overwhelmingly white voters. It was no easy task.

"Iowa and Los Angeles have much more in common than you might think, and it's not just because we have the USS Iowa parked in the Port of L.A.," Garcetti said at a party dinner.

The alleged plan was to discredit the agreement, which the president has called the “worst deal ever,” by digging up dirt on Ben Rhodes, one of President Obama’s national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, who was Vice President Biden’s national security adviser. Investigators were supposedly told to look at their personal lives and any involvement with Iran-friendly lobbyists. They were also told to contact journalists who supported the deal to see if Rhodes or Kahl told them any sensitive information.