Abortion In Ireland Research Articles

‘I’ve Been Here Before’: Women Helping Women in Irish Abortion Narratives

In 2018, Ireland’s Eighth Amendment was repealed following a national referendum, and in January 2019, abortion became legal in the Republic of Ireland up to twelve weeks of gestation. Historically, Irish institutions have attempted to eliminate abortion through forced pregnancies in Catholic “mother-and-baby homes” and censorship laws designed to suppress information about reproductive health. However, abortion narratives in Irish literature reflect the realities of abortion in Ireland, including the networks of women who have helped people terminate pregnancies. For example, in Maeve Binchy’s Eighth Amendment-era short story “Shepherd’s Bush,” an Irish woman is assisted by friends and acquaintances who provide her with lodging, medical appointments, and camaraderie in London. Several works published in 2017, amidst the campaign to repeal the Eighth, depict young protagonists who share their abortion narratives and become activists. Many Irish people still rely on groups such as Women Help Women and Women on Web to safely access abortion medication, and the sharing of information and experiences remains relevant and necessary as Ireland transitions into an era of reproductive rights.

Obstetric violence and consent during pregnancy and childbirth: the Eighth Amendment and its impact on the Irish maternity system

ABSTRACT In the run up to the referendum on abortion in Ireland in 2018, women shared experiences of being denied abortion care through social media. The ‘In Her Shoes’ dataset is a collection of archived Facebook posts in which women shared their experiences of obstetric coercion, lack of information and lack of consent to medical procedures during pregnancy and childbirth. Using women’s testimonies from the In Her Shoes database (https://repository.dri.ie/catalog/wm11nd02p), this research will critically analyse these stories. The paper will analyse women’s experiences in maternity care pre-2018 before the constitutional change. The article includes experiences of being denied treatment because of their pregnancy, being forced to continue the pregnancy when there was a risk to the woman’s health, as well as a lack of information and lack of consent to medical procedures. The article puts women’s experiences at the forefront of the research and analyses their experiences within a medical narrative framework. It argues that the Eighth Amendment, not just denied abortion care, but contributed towards a medical culture in which the patient’s experience was not central to that care. Since the removal of the Eighth Amendment, we should move towards a patient-centered care approach to maternity care in Ireland.

The woman is the active agent: General practitioners and the agentive displacement of abortion in Ireland.

After the legalization of abortion in 2018, Ireland needed clinicians to become abortion providers and make this political win a medical reality. Yet Irish doctors had next-to-no training in abortion care, and barriers ranging from stigma to economic pressures in the healthcare system impacted doctors' desire to volunteer. How did hundreds of Irish doctors make the shift from family doctor to abortion provider? Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2017 and 2020, this article explores the process by which Irish general practitioners became abortion providers, attending to the material impact of medical technologies on that journey. Drawing from medical anthropologists who have examined similar themes of agency, pharmaceuticals, and medico-legal frameworks within the topic of assisted dying, I build on Anita Hannig's idea of "agentive displacement" to frame the productive impact of abortion pills on this transition.

A qualitative exploration of young female Muslims’ perspectives of abortion and belonging following the 2018 Irish Abortion Referendum

IntroductionIn 2018, Ireland conducted a referendum, ultimately supporting the legalisation of abortion. The views of religious minority groups can go unheard ‘by an insensitive majority’ in national cultural debates. This study explores female Muslim Irish university students’ perspectives on abortion and the impact of the 2018 Irish abortion debate on their sense of belonging within Ireland.MethodsTen female Muslim university students completed semi-structured interviews. The interview comprised seven open-ended questions examining perspectives on abortion and a sense of national belonging. A thematic analysis was carried out on the data.ResultsSix major themes emerged: (1) specific circumstances, (2) Islam, (3) family, (4) misuse of new laws, (5) stable sense of national belonging, (6) consequences of historical abortion legislation. Participants were largely supportive of the legal changes. Participants indicated that their sense of national belonging might have been affected if their religious beliefs had conflicted with the referendum outcome.ConclusionsParticipants largely supported the legalisation of abortion in Ireland, provided that the new laws aligned with their Islamic beliefs. The research indicated the referendum did not affect young Muslim women’s sense of belonging in Ireland.Policy ImplicationsMany national debates on social issues focus on winning majority support. This research highlighted the importance of canvasing and reflecting on the perspectives of people from minorities in order to reinforce a sense of larger political belonging.

‘Wrap our arms around them here in Ireland’: Social media campaigns in the Irish abortion referendum

The 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which codified a near-absolute ban on abortion in Ireland, was ratified in 1983 and removed after a high profile campaign to ‘Repeal the 8th’ in 2018. This article analyses the language of the pro-choice group Together for Yes and the anti-choice groups Love Both and Pro-Life Ireland that campaigned to ‘Save the 8th’. We combine an application of the Appraisal framework with an account of conceptual metaphor in a Critical Discourse Analysis of the language of both campaigns on the social network platform Twitter. Both sides of the ‘Repeal Referendum’ strategically utilised language across a wide range of semiotic modes. This article assesses the specific role of social media language in the Irish abortion referendum and connects these strategies to the wider campaign tactics of both sides.

Women’s Stories Transforming Understandings of Abortion

This paper is a self-reflective account of my experience of receiving a diagnosis of a fatal foetal anomaly in pregnancy in Ireland. It re-tells my story within the context of my memories of abortion in Ireland during the years 1992 to 2015. Placing my memories within a specific historical and social frame, this paper outlines how abortion was positioned in Ireland during these periods and reflects on how this positioning of abortion impacted upon my pregnancy. It further analyses the role that story-telling and personal experience played in the campaign to repeal the 8th Amendment and questions how these stories were treated differently from other forms of knowledge and epistemology.

Colonialism, Human Rights, and Abortion in Ireland

This essay explores the role of narratives in the field of the Irish abortion debate. In specific, it explores the different types of narratives that both the pro-choice and pro-life groups manipulate in order to draw support from The Irish populace. The author explains that the pro-choice groups employ political-legal narratives To argue for the right to abortion whereas historical narratives and anti-British sentiments are more commonly found within pro-life narratives. However, the true purpose of the pro-life narratives is to prevent the secularization and liberalization of Ireland's laws, thereby maintaining the patriarchy at the top of the social hierarchy. However, with the 2018 referendum on the constitutional ban on abortion resulting in a liberalization of Ireland's abortion laws, the lack of success on The pro-life end is revealed, and a possible wave of liberalization may follow to permanently shift the social hierarchy.

Lifting the cloak of secrecy: Experiences of providing crisis pregnancy counselling in a changing legislative context in Ireland

AbstractCrisis pregnancy counselling (CPC) is a specific form of crisis counselling, whereby the pregnancy represents a personal crisis for the woman involved. While much research has been undertaken into understanding the antecedents and outcomes of crisis pregnancy, few studies have examined the experience of CPC from the perspective of counsellors. In addition, no studies to date have examined the changes in the experience of CPC following substantial changes in abortion legislation. The current study therefore aimed to describe the experiences of providing CPC within the context of recent legislative changes pertaining to the provision of abortion in Ireland. Seven semi‐structured, in‐depth individual interviews were conducted with counsellors and therapists who had provided CPC in the Irish context. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Four superordinate themes emerged from the data analysis: (1) tension created by legislative conditions, (2) the impact of societal views and stigma, (3) a new sense of freedom, and (4) finding meaning and motivation in supporting women's choices. Overall, the study highlights that CPC is a complex experience, which differs in important ways from providing counselling in other contexts, including other forms of crisis counselling. Implications for policy and practice are identified.

Triumph and concession? The moral and emotional construction of Ireland's campaign for abortion rights

In March 2018, the Irish government confirmed that a referendum would be held on 25 May, allowing for the Irish public to vote on the legalisation of abortion. The same month, Together for Yes – the national civil society campaign advocating for a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum – was launched. This article draws upon findings from 27 in-depth interviews conducted in December 2019 and January 2020 with Irish abortion activists, to explore the moral and emotional construction of abortion within the ‘Yes’ campaign. This research suggests that the ‘Yes’ campaign, which secured 66% of the votes cast in the referendum, framed abortion as a negative affective object and constructed the moral permissibility of abortion along rather conservative lines. Data from the first year of abortion provision in the Republic of Ireland reveals that abortion seekers still face huge obstacles in accessing services in the State. The legislation introduced in January 2019 allows abortion on request only until 12 weeks, whilst issues remain in relation to the refusal of care. This article, therefore, concludes that by framing abortion in conservative terms, the pro-choice campaign has not yet succeeded in destigmatising abortion in Ireland – an issue now translated into limited legislation and inadequate provision of services.

Remembering facts versus feelings in the wake of political events

ABSTRACT Amid rising political polarisation, inaccurate memory for facts and exaggerated memories of grievances can drive individuals and groups further apart. We assessed whether people with more accurate memories of the facts concerning political events were less susceptible to bias when remembering how events made them feel. Study 1 assessed participants’ memories concerning the 2016 U.S. presidential election (N = 571), and included 33 individuals with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM). Study 2 assessed participants’ memories concerning the 2018 referendum on abortion in Ireland (N = 733). Participants rated how happy, angry, and scared they felt days after these events. Six months later, they recalled their feelings and factual information. In both studies, participants overestimated how angry they had felt but underestimated happiness and fear. Adjusting for importance, no association was found between the accuracy of memory for facts and feelings. Accuracy in remembering facts was predicted by media exposure. Accuracy in remembering feelings was predicted by consistency over time in feelings and appraisals about past events. HSAM participants in Study 1 remembered election-related facts better than others, but not their feelings. Thus, having a good grasp of the facts did not protect against bias in remembering feelings about political events.

Biomedical Controversies in Catholic Ireland: A Contemporary History of Divisive Social Issues by Don O'Leary

Reviewed by: Biomedical Controversies in Catholic Ireland: A Contemporary History of Divisive Social Issues by Don O'Leary Colum Kenny Biomedical Controversies in Catholic Ireland: A Contemporary History of Divisive Social Issues, by Don O'Leary (Cork: Eryn Press, 2020, 398 p., paperback, $20.99) Don O'Leary frames within an Irish context some continuing controversies relating to conception, care, and the termination of life. The waning role of the Catholic Church in Ireland has been marked and even hastened by related debates. Not just in Ireland but around the world, questions concerning abortion and assisted suicide, for example, have given rise to arguments so heated that they are at times termed "culture wars," although such "wars" may range beyond what O'Leary calls "biomedical controversies" to include marriage equality, gender fluidity, and other issues. He provides a context for debates by examining developments in biomedical science and law and by interrogating central aspects of Catholic moral teaching. O'Leary dedicates a chapter to each of the following topics: stem cell research and assisted reproduction (2000–2005), frozen embryo and stem cell research (2005–6), embryos and the right to life (2006–11), assisted suicide, assisted human reproduction (2013–20), and abortion (1992–2016). He prefaces these six chapters with an opening on "Papal Pronouncements" and follows them with "Challenges to the Catholic Ethos" before finally considering the successful campaign to repeal the section of the Irish constitution that severely limited the government's ability to legislate for abortion in Ireland. His book is a helpful resource for understanding the complexity of the topics on which he touches, although the absence of an index is regrettable. The volume is referenced and includes a useful bibliography. O'Leary's decision to locate his subject expressly in "Catholic Ireland" raises questions. The independent Irish state has never been constitutionally denominational, even if the Catholic Church long enjoyed a special and influential place in its affairs. Insofar as the state's ethos was for decades Catholic, it reflected [End Page 143] democratically the sentiments of a largely Catholic population that was then obedient to its church's teaching in respect to policy and legislation concerning procreation and marriage. The latter relationship changed fundamentally even before the end of the twentieth century. If there was a signal moment when official Ireland crossed some kind of Rubicon in its relationship with Catholic bishops, it was in August 1996 when, during a visit to Chicago and Detroit to attract financial institutions to Ireland, the Irish Minister for Finance Ruairi Quinn TD described his state as a "post-Catholic, pluralist republic." The head of state by then was Mary Robinson, a human rights lawyer and liberal who had been elected president of Ireland in 1990. If at the time Quinn offended some people, and if others regarded his statement as an expression of personal wishful thinking, in hindsight he seems to have been correct. Census returns continue to show the great majority of Irish people still recording their religion nominally as Catholic, yet their level of attendance at church has fallen steadily and their attitudes and behavior are in practice akin to what hitherto were regarded as Protestant or secular types. The dining metaphor "à la carte Catholics" is used by conservatives, often contemptuously, to describe the contemporary exercise of conscience by individuals with respect to Catholic dogma. Even one quite progressive bishop has spoken of "Nicodemus Catholics … living in a sort of de facto atheism." It is unlikely that Minister Quinn was being deliberately provocative. He did not seek publicity for his comment. It was barely reported, appearing as the very last sentence of a story in the middle of page seven of the Irish Times. He had been fielding a range of questions from Irish emigrants in the United States who remembered when their church's hand lay heavily on Irish social policy. Desmond Connell, then archbishop of Dublin, retorted that Quinn had spoken "in a way that seems to endorse a secular hostility to any Catholic influence on our national outlook." Connell would later be discredited for his handling of child abuse cases in the archdiocese of Dublin, especially when he invoked the casuistic doctrine...

"We Can't Keep Painting Over Our Problems": Murals, Social Media, and Feminist Activism in Ireland

"We Can't Keep Painting Over Our Problems":Murals, Social Media, and Feminist Activism in Ireland Rachael A. Young (bio) On 26 July 2016 eighty protestors gathered in the space in front of Dublin's Project Arts Centre. Dressed in black "repeal" jumpers and blue face paint, the group chanted "What do we want? A woman's right to choose!" while holding up photographs of a red heart with the words "Repeal the 8th" written inside. The photos replicated a mural that was painted over the previous day. Activist Andrea Horan had commissioned popular street artist Maser to paint the pro-choice mural, but Dublin City Council announced that the artwork lacked necessary permits. Project Arts Centre director Cian O'Brien was forced to paint over the image, leaving a plain blue wall where the mural had previously resided. But this censorship could not remove Maser's artwork or the idea it represented from the public sphere. Indeed, Irish feminists and activists refused to allow the mural image to be forgotten or erased. Standing in front of the protested space in Temple Bar, one activist argued, "You can paint over the mural. You can cover us up, but the problem is not going away. We're still here. It's not going away with a little bit of blue paint."1 Refusing to be "painted over" anymore, Irish feminist activists and their allies used murals to create both a physical and digital space [End Page 320] to discuss and advocate for women's issues during the repeal movement. This article considers how murals created a forum-like space, both corporeal and virtual, and allowed Irish citizens to interact with feminist issues and debates in their daily lives. Many academics have discussed how art has created a dissident space for feminist activists, exploring how Irish women have created and navigated these spaces to challenge an oppressive patriarchal system.2 In this article I will build on this work, specifically exploring how contemporary feminist murals in Ireland integrate and combine physical and digital space. Replicas of Maser's mural spread across Ireland, creating material locations in which viewers could physically insert themselves into the abortion debate while simultaneously allowing people a digital method to claim the issue as their own via personal social-media accounts. This amalgamated space allowed people to interact with Maser's mural, and through it the repeal movement, in a personal and continual manner. In using both physical murals and their socialmedia interactions, Irish feminists successfully helped to repeal the Eighth Amendment and created a precedent for feminist activism to use street art to engage with other issues concerning female bodies, including the subjects of sexual violence and body positivity.3 This article will examine four murals that all engage with Irish women's struggle to end patriarchal control of the female body. I begin with two pro-choice murals, Maser's 2016 Repeal the 8th and the 2018 Savita by Aches. I then analyze two artworks by street artist Estr, the 2018 work Not Asking For It, which addresses the topics of consent, sexual violence, and rape culture in Ireland, and a 2019 mural depicting singer Lizzo that aims to combat the stigma of shame [End Page 321] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Maser's Repeal the 8th mural after being painted over. The HunReal Issues, (@HunRealIssues), Twitter, 26 July 2016, 12:58 pm, https://twitter.com/HunRealIssues/status/757545602825748480. surrounding female bodies and sexuality by embracing body-positive ideals. Building upon the success of Maser's work, I argue that each of these murals created a combination of physical and digital space that was used by Irish feminist activists as a new tool to challenge patriarchal authority over women and their bodies. Feminist Activism, Street Art, and Social Media: Parallel Functions of Creating Space The 2020 themed issue of Feminist Review concerning abortion in Ireland begins with a familiar feminist cry, a refusal to apologize for creating space "to express the injuries involved in the everyday experience of living as a woman in Ireland's 'police state.'"4 One method...

Abortion in Ireland

Abortion in Ireland

Legal and non-legal barriers to abortion in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

This article compares abortion laws, regulations and access patterns in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. We focus in most detail on the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and England with a shorter discussion of Scotland and Wales. We attend to the laws and legal reforms in each region but also consider the non-legal factors that restrict or facilitate abortion services in each place. In this article, we seek to illustrate the complex relationship between abortion law and abortion access, noting especially how non-legal barriers shape the way an abortion law functions for the people who live under it.

"A Hundred Little Violences, a Hundred Little Wounds": Personal Disclosure, Shame, and Privacy in Ireland's Abortion Access

"A Hundred Little Violences, a Hundred Little Wounds": Personal Disclosure, Shame, and Privacy in Ireland's Abortion Access

Crossing Troubled Waters: Abortion in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Prince Edward Island by Colleen MacQuarrie, Fiona Bloomer, Claire Pierson, and Shannon Stettner (eds.)

<i>Crossing Troubled Waters: Abortion in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Prince Edward Island</i> by Colleen MacQuarrie, Fiona Bloomer, Claire Pierson, and Shannon Stettner (eds.)

The median voter theorem and the repeal of the prohibition on abortion in Ireland: an analysis of the passage of the Thirty-Sixth Amendment

In 2018, the Irish people voted in favour of the passage of the Thirty-Sixth Amendment. This vote abolished the Eighth Amendment, which had previously outlawed abortion by establishing the equal rights of the woman and the unborn child. To uncover potential driving forces behind the vote share in support of the Thirty-Sixth Amendment, this article uses regional data on religious identification, age and a measure of traditional identity. The results of this article show that variation by region in religious identification was significantly correlated with voting behaviour in the 2018 referendum. Furthermore, evidence for the validity of the median voter theorem is developed by analysing data on the reported support of Irish elected representatives for the legislation before the vote. The results of this analysis on the referendum vote suggest a societal shift has taken place in the preferences of Irish citizens, which is complimented by the views of their elected representatives.

Persistence and Change in Morality Policy: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Politics of Abortion in Ireland and Poland

On the issue of abortion, Ireland and Poland have been among the most conservative countries in Europe. Their legal and cultural approaches to this issue have been deeply influenced by the institution of the Catholic Church and its purported role as a defender of an authentic national identity. However, their political climates for abortion reform are increasingly divergent: Ireland has liberalised its abortion law substantially since 2018, while Poland is moving towards further criminalisation with the repeated introduction of restrictive laws in parliament. Both have seen active pro-choice movements who mobilise for reform and widespread non-compliance with their restrictive abortion laws, but the policy impact of these trends varies significantly. What accounts for this difference? This article draws on comparative analysis of Ireland and Poland to assess their divergent trajectories on abortion reform, arguing that the most significant driver of change between the two is the disparity in influence of the Catholic Church on politics and policymaking.

Abortion in Ireland: Introduction to the Themed Issue

Abortion in Ireland: Introduction to the Themed Issue

Transnational abortion pill flows and the political geography of abortion in Ireland

ABSTRACT The growing availability of abortion pills has transformed the safety and accessibility of abortion worldwide, especially in countries with very restrictive abortion laws. The public health implications of this abortion technology have been widely recognized, but its political and geographical impacts require closer attention. This paper examines the geography of illegal abortion pills in the Republic of Ireland, where abortion pills became widely accessible through transnational activist networks, despite a constitutional abortion ban. It contributes to political geography and international relations conversations about materiality and sovereignty by mapping the flows of abortion pills into Ireland and discussing the varied ways that the institutions of the state conceptualized and responded to these flows. It argues that the state’s response to the influx of illegal abortion pills was predominantly shaped by its understanding of their territorial significance: the state sought to intercept pills at the border and discourage their use at home while advocating abortion travel abroad, eventually legislating for abortion reform that would offer tightly controlled access authorized by doctors. The paper advances the research agendas in reproductive and abortion geographies by bringing them into conversation with broader debates on territory and politics.