Thousands of pregnant women are affected by the 8th Amendment in ways they had never anticipated every day, so we needed to communicate just how “everyday” and pervasive this problem actually is.

We created a film entitled “25 Annoying things about being pregnant” featuring real Irish women. It begins with women cataloguing light-hearted, everyday pregnancy annoyances – swollen feet and cankles, constantly needing to pee… However, midway through the film we pull the rug from under our audience. The women begin to tell their personal stories about the cruel reality of being pregnant in Ireland under the 8th Amendment – having to travel abroad, forced medical procedures, carrying a baby to term that would not survive outside the womb. We conclude with the message that all pregnant women in Ireland are at risk under the 8th Amendment.

“When you don’t think the 8th Amendment will affect you… until it does.”

Much of the conversation around the 8th Amendment happens only around key political events – protest marches, government hearings or meetings of the Citizen’s Assembly. We decided to deliberately launch our film at a time clear of these events, to keep the 8th in the conversation while getting everyone’s full attention.

We placed the film unbranded on the Facebook page of popular lifestyle and entertainment website Her.ie. Our intention was to lull people into a false sense of security with its pithy “clickbait” title, and then shock them with the realities of the 8th Amendment – just as many pregnant Irish women are shocked by them every day.

We had a limited ad spend of €90, however, this proved unnecessary. The film immediately went viral. Amnesty International then followed up with an extensive PR blitz, resulting in interviews with all major Irish publications and broadcasters, effectively changing the conversation.

Within the first week of its release the film was viewed nearly 1 million times across facebook, twitter and youtube (in a country of just 4.7 million). It was shared and discussed by people and publications all around the globe, including The New York Times, Mashable, Adweek and many others. This was almost entirely organic reach, with just a tiny €90 media spend on Amnesty International’s Facebook page. Furthermore, over 300 volunteers signed up to Amnesty International’s Repeal the 8th campaign network after the film’s release.

Most importantly, due to intense lobbying from Amnesty and other Repeal groups and overwhelming public pressure, the Irish government announced that a referendum on the 8th Amendment would be held on May 25th 2018, and that they would be campaigning to repeal it.

So hopefully by the time you read this, Irish women will at long last have been granted full and equal rights.