Contract, Charity, and Honorable Entitlement: Social Citizenship and the 1967 Abortion Act in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement

Abstract

This article investigates the extent to which women's political, civil, and social citizenship rights in the post–Good Friday Agreement (1998) period in Northern Ireland can be expanded. It argues that the Good Friday Agreement, as a framework document, offers some opportunity for the expansion of women's political and civil citizenship rights. Legislative attempts to extend the 1967 Abortion Act (United Kingdom) to Northern Ireland and recent efforts to have the existing law governing abortion in Northern Ireland clarified through the judiciary are examined to demonstrate the continued denial of women's social citizenship rights. Various routes to address Northern Irish women's access to abortion services are assessed, and it is argued that extending the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland, a long-standing demand of pro-choice women's groups, will insufficiently facilitate women's access to social citizenship rights. Consistent with recent directions in social policy scholarship, this article argues that a recognition of agency as an outcome of individual and collective social action is necessary to access abortion and women's social citizenship rights in the post–Good Friday Agreement period in Northern Ireland.