TRADE unions and pro-choice campaigners in Scotland will mark this year’s International Women’s Day with a rally today to raise awareness of the global issue of abortion rights.

STUC women’s committee secretary Ann Henderson said it was important to use International Women’s Day to call for action to address the “inequality women face across the world in accessing abortion.”

Ms Henderson also drew attention to the draconian laws in Northern Ireland where abortion is still illegal unless women and girls seeking to terminate a pregnancy can prove their lives are at risk.

Pro-choice activists fear that the impending devolution of abortion law to the Scottish Parliament could allow powerful religious groups to lobby for the 1967 Abortion Act to be restricted and undermined, as has happened in Northern Ireland.

Ms Henderson highlighted the situation for women in Brazil, where despite “the Zika virus being linked to brain deformities in babies, pregnant women are still prevented from accessing safe and legal abortions.”

Abortion Rights Committee Scotland member Denise Christie told the Star that “International Women’s Day is all about showing sisterly solidarity to all the women who do not have access to safe legal abortion services.”

She said the action was vital to highlight “the importance of being pro-choice and demand that this must be recognised across the world.”

Members of the STUC women’s committee will join Abortion Rights Scotland and other groups at 12.30pm outside the Scottish Parliament.

In Dumfries, Reel to Real will celebrate International Women’s Day with a screening of Yasmin Fedda’s Queens of Syria.

The documentary, to be screened at 7.30pm at The Stove, follows a theatre project run with Syrian refugee women staging a new version of the Greek tragedy the Trojan Women, which centres on the horrors of war.