“The kind of doctor who doesn't believe doctor knows best”: Doctors for Choice and the medical voice in Irish abortion politics, 2002–2018

Abstract

This article examines how the physician advocacy organization Doctors for Choice articulated a collective pro-choice “medical voice” over the course of sixteen years. This voice was central to the successful 2018 campaign to repeal Ireland's Eighth Amendment, which had imposed a virtual ban on abortion in the Republic of Ireland since 1983. I examine how DfC set itself in opposition to the powerful cadre of anti-abortion Catholic physicians who had dominated Irish public discourse on abortion for decades. DfC not only had to provide a strong alternative argument, but also had to distance itself from a legacy of physicians as gatekeepers to abortion. Based on oral histories and documentary sources, I argue that DfC developed a collective pro-choice “medical voice” and a politics of physician advocacy by leveraging the cultural authority of physicians and using discourses of medical expertise and patient autonomy. Doctors have been called upon to use their social position to fight health-related social inequality. By providing a detailed case study based on individual experiences of and perspectives on physician advocacy, this article examines the framework of “physician advocacy” in practice. It identifies affective and structural barriers to physician engagement in abortion politics across medical specialties. Finally, it considers how, in the face of these barriers, a small group of physicians helped to set the terms of a movement for accessible and equitable abortion care in Ireland.