Laura Dowling

The agency of a woman's body is still being questioned.

Financial support to feed her family, wherever she may be, is questioned.

Like, it's bizarre to think that in the United Nations, in New York City, they couldn't find a consensus.

Sadly, it does.

I mean, I got involved in politics and I decided to run in late 2018 for the 2019 European elections.

And

Didn't grow up in party politics, wasn't involved in student politics in college.

But it was very embedded into the community where if something needed to get done, my parents were usually involved and you showed up on a Saturday morning and the hall needed to get swept or the church needed to get cleaned or something needed to be done and it got done.

And then fast forward a number of years getting into politics.

And I should say I worked for US multinationals.

So if something was decided on a Monday morning, by Monday afternoon, it's in action.

Yeah.

And then fast forward 2019 and I got elected and I thought, I'm going to make change yesterday.

And then you're like, oh, this is not how this works.

And in some cases, the rational side of my brain is like, I get it.

You do need that consensus.

Countries like Ireland weren't at the table around marriage equality or access to, I say, women's health care in all its forms, maybe 10, 15%.

20 years ago.

And you have other countries, perhaps in the EU, that are where we were at that period of time.

So it does take time.