In 1998 Paula Rego executed a series of pastels triggered by the referendum in Portugal to review the law censoring legal abortion. Describing her feelings at the time she said: "I got angry because I'd seen it all in Portugal- the suffering that went on when abortion was totally illegal. It was mind-boggling. There was so much suffering" (quoted in Paula Rego interviewed by Edward King, February 2001, Celestina's House, p. 11). Unusually for Rego, who never replicates her paintings in graphic form, she produced a series of etchings of the paintings, a political decision motivated by her desire to spread her strongly held convictions on this issue. This important series in the artist's oeuvre is held in the collection of the Tate.