Ireland – Ivana Bacik: How abortion campaign went from ‘desperately lonely’ to ‘tremendously positive’

On a political level, there was very little to cling to as an abortion activist in the 80s and 90s, she says, and religion of course played a large part in that.

May 27, 2023

LABOUR LEADER IVANA Bacik spoke to The Journal about how the route to abortion rights went from being a “desperately lonely” movement on the periphery of society to becoming a mainstream political issue.

The subject of access to abortion stills holds the public’s attention today with a recent review finding that issues such as geographic location, the three-day waiting period and other obstacles still impede women’s access to abortion services.

Continued: https://www.thejournal.ie/ivana-bacik-interview-abortion-rights-ireland-6077186-May2023/

Five years after Ireland’s historic abortion referendum, access to care is still ‘patchy’

By Niamh Kennedy and Emily Blumenthal, CNN
Thu May 25, 2023

In 2018, the Irish public voted overwhelmingly to repeal the country’s Eighth Amendment, overturning one of the strictest abortion bans in the European Union. There were scenes of jubilation as the referendum result was announced, with many in Ireland seeing it as a historic step that would give women control over their own bodies.

But five years on, although abortion is free and legally available in Ireland up to 12 weeks of pregnancy – after that allowed only in exceptional circumstances, if there is a risk to the mother’s life or the fetus is not expected to survive – the abortion system is still far from where campaigners and charities would like it to be.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/europe/ireland-abortion-referendum-5-years-intl-cmd/index.html

Abortion—The Real Irish Lessons

Road to Repeal: 50 Years of Struggle in Ireland for Contraception and Abortion (new book)

by Tomás Mac Sheoin
Feb 01, 2023

In August 2022, Fintan O’Toole, a journalist with the Irish Times, published an article in the New York Review of Books giving his interpretation of the lessons to be learned from the Irish experience with abortion. O’Toole first outlined the history: in 1981, right-wing groups, buttressed by American support—including financial support—formed the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign, which persuaded the Irish government to propose a referendum to include a ban on abortion in the Irish Constitution. The ban was passed in 1983, becoming the constitution’s eighth amendment.

O’Toole outlines three problems with legal bans on abortion. First, they simply do not stop abortions: in 1985, 3,888 women traveled from Ireland to England to terminate their pregnancies; in 2001, that number was 6,673.

Continued: https://monthlyreview.org/2023/02/01/abortion-the-real-irish-lessons/

01.02.2023

Featured

Film, Art, Books

constitutional amendment to ban abortion

Eighth Amendment

Fintan O'Toole

Pro-Life Amendment Campaign

Savita Halappanavar

traveling for abortion

Ireland – Protesters call for removal of barriers to abortion

Saturday, 29 Oct 2022
By Colman O'Sullivan

Around a thousand people have marched in Dublin to mark the tenth anniversary of the death of Savita Halappanavar and to call for changes to abortion laws.

Speaking at the Garden of Remembrance before the march set off, Orla O'Connor of the National Women's Council called for an end to the three-day waiting period before a woman can get an abortion and the abolition of the 12-week limit.

Continued: https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2022/1029/1332157-abortion/

Savita Halappanavar should not have had to die for reproductive rights to change

Ireland owes Savita Halappanavar a great debt and a great deal of gratitude for making this country safer for other women, writes Liz Dunphy.

FRI, 28 OCT, 2022
LIZ DUNPHY

Wax dripped like tears from flickering candles which burned brightly around a photo of Savita Halappanavar at a vigil for her in Cork in the days after her death.

The people cried too. Women and men, teenagers, parents holding their young children in their arms and by the hand, knowing that Savita could have been them, their daughter, their mother, their sister, their friend.

Continued: https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-40993598.html

28.10.2022

Liz Dunphy

Savita Halappanavar

Simon Harris

Ireland changed when Savita Halappanavar died – it must continue to change

On the ten year anniversary of the death of Savita Halappanavar, Lynn Enright reflects on how she galvanized a nation and how there is more to be done.

by Lynn Enright
27th Oct 2022

Whenever and wherever abortion is illegal, there are horror stories. Stories so grim and so gruesome they make you weep. A tale of a suicidal child forced to carry the foetus of the man who raped her; news reports of a young woman rooting through blood-soaked rubbish before reporting her housemate, who took illegal abortion pills alone, to police. In 2012, came a story so bleak that it changed a nation.

Savita Halappanavar was 31 in October 2012 and she was 17 weeks’ pregnant; it was to be the first baby for her and her husband, Praveen. If you’re carrying a longed-for baby, the 17-week mark is a nice stage of pregnancy. The morning sickness is usually gone and it is around then that you’ll feel the first flutters of movement, a tiny kick here and there.

Continued: https://www.image.ie/agenda/ireland-changed-when-savita-halappanavar-died-it-must-continue-to-change-606207

27.10.2022

Five maternity hospitals will not provide abortions until next year

Ellen Coyne
October 24 2022

Five of the country’s maternity hospitals will not be providing abortion services until next year at the earliest, amid conscientious objection from individual obstetricians and a lack of resources.

Another two maternity hospitals are still in talks with the HSE to try to roll out termination of pregnancy services next year, three years after free access to abortion was first legalised in Ireland.

Continued: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/health/five-maternity-hospitals-will-not-provide-abortions-until-next-year-42089657.html

24.10.2022

Featured

News

conscientious objection

Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018

Health Service Executive

How Overruling Roe is Already Risking Women’s Lives

Sian Norris
25 August 2022

It’s two months since the US Supreme Court ended the nationwide right to abortion, and the horror stories are already piling up. Worse is yet to come, reports Sian Norris

It’s now two months since the US Supreme Court decided on Dobbs v Jackson’s Women’s Health Organisation – a case on abortion rights that ultimately overruled Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that allowed for nationwide access to safe and legal terminations. The Dobbs decision was written by the conservative Justice Samuel Alito, and allows for abortion laws to be made at a state, rather than federal level.

Within the first two months, nine states have implemented bans on abortion – some, like Missouri, within 24 hours. It, along with Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Dakota have outlawed abortion in all cases, including when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.

Continued: https://bylinetimes.com/2022/08/25/how-overruling-roe-is-already-risking-womens-lives/

25.08.2022

Commentary

Featured

Centre for Reproductive Rights

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Ireland’s Struggle for Abortion Rights Should Be an Inspiration for the US

Ireland’s Struggle for Abortion Rights Should Be an Inspiration for the US

BY SINÉAD KENNEDY
Aug 22, 2022

Irish pro-choice activists had to overcome a rigid constitutional ban on abortion that was in place for more than 30 years. They succeeded by putting mass mobilization and a confident assertion of the right to choose at the heart of their campaign.

In May 2018, the Irish electorate voted by a two-to-one majority to remove or “repeal” the prohibition on abortion, known as the Eighth Amendment, from the country’s constitution. While opinion polls had suggested that pro-choice campaigners would win, most predicted a nerve-rackingly close result; certainly no one anticipated the sheer scale of the victory and the support for abortion access found across every section of society, from young to old, urban to rural.

Continued: https://jacobin.com/2022/08/ireland-abortion-rights-repeal-campaign-us-roe

The Irish Lesson

If the purpose of abortion bans is to actually reduce the rate at which women terminate pregnancies, the Irish experience shows how utterly ineffectual they are.

Fintan O’Toole
August 18, 2022 issue, NY Books (posted July 27)

In 1973, soon after the US Supreme Court established a right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, Charles E. Rice concluded that “the essential remedy to the abortion problem is a constitutional amendment.” Rice is an important figure in the intellectual history of the antiabortion movement that is now, with the recent overturning of Roe, enjoying its moment of triumph. He was a cofounder of the Conservative Party of New York State, formed by those who considered the Republican Party too liberal; one of his scholarly tracts is an attack on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a professor of constitutional law, he established Notre Dame University in Indiana as a redoubt of the conservative Catholic legal thinking whose influence most fully blossomed when Donald Trump appointed Rice’s colleague and associate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Continued: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/08/18/the-irish-lesson-fintan-otoole/