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/

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 8th: Ireland, the abortion referendum. You can feel the tectonic plates shifting

TV: This highly watchable film chronicles the Repeal side’s winning campaign of 2018

Wed, Aug 4, 2021
Ed Power

The historic significance of the vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, in the referendum of 2018, was lost on nobody at the time. Three years later, The 8th (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 9.35pm) captures the sense that tectonic plates were shifting under Irish society as the electorate went to the polls to allow abortion in Ireland.

The 8th, which comes to television after a video-on-demand run earlier this year, is told largely from the perspective of the Repeal campaign, particularly that of the veteran women’s-rights advocate Ailbhe Smyth. The point she and other campaigners make over and over is that, although the vote was of course about restoring to women their bodily autonomy, the wider context was the State’s beginning a long journey of atonement for decades of institutionalised misogyny.

Continued: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/the-8th-ireland-the-abortion-referendum-you-can-feel-the-tectonic-plates-shifting-1.4638914

Ireland – ‘This institution for ‘unmarried mothers’ is not part of some distant past – it closed in 2006’

Writer Caelainn Hogan has accessed files that give an insight into life at a Donegal mother-and-baby home known as The Castle.

Aug 23, 2020
Caelainn Hogan

IN A SMALL town in Donegal close to the border with Derry there is an abandoned building that was once a mother-and-baby home called the Castle.

The boarded-up house is visible from the road, set back from high gates in an overgrown field.

This institution where ‘unmarried mothers’ were sent is not part of some distant past. It only closed in 2006.

Continued: https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/caelinn-hogan-the-castle-5178051-Aug2020/

Student Leadership Helped to Legalize Abortion in Ireland

Student Leadership Helped to Legalize Abortion in Ireland

June 27, 2018
by Addie Duckett

On May 25, in a huge win for women, people across Ireland voted overwhelmingly to support the repeal of the eighth amendment to Ireland’s constitution. The referendum passed with 66.4% voting ‘yes’ in a rebuke of the draconian abortion laws that have governed the country for decades. This vote follows the 2015 passage of the Marriage Equality act, marking a trend of successful liberalization efforts largely indebted to the dedication of youth and student leadership throughout the country.

The eighth amendment, originally passed in 1983, established the equal right to life of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses, outlawing abortion in nearly all cases. Until 1992, it also remained illegal to travel abroad to seek an abortion, though many women still did so.

Continued: http://feministcampus.org/student-leadership-helped-to-legalize-abortion-in-ireland/

Fact Check: Is repeal necessary for abortions in fatal foetal cases?

Fact Check: Is repeal necessary for abortions in fatal foetal cases?
Together for Yes claims Constitutional change needed for FFA abortion law

May 9, 2018
Sarah Bardon Political Reporter

Question:
Is removing the Eighth Amendment necessary before legislation can be introduced to allow abortions in cases of fatal foetal abnormality (FFA)?
Who is making the claim?

The claim is made by the Together for Yes campaign group, which is advocating for a Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum.

Continued: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/abortion-referendum/fact-check-is-repeal-necessary-for-abortions-in-fatal-foetal-cases-1.3489530

Ireland – Bid to fix abortion law in Constitution did not work

Noel Whelan: Bid to fix abortion law in Constitution did not work
Eighth Amendment has forced isolation and travel on thousands of pregnant Irish women

May 3, 2018
Noel Whelan

We are not debating the merits of the Eighth Amendment in the abstract, this time around. It has been in the Constitution for more than 35 years. We know how it played out – and it wasn’t the way its proponents argued and hoped it would.

In 1983, those who opposed the amendment warned that its terms were vague and uncertain.

In the years since, our superior courts have spent many days hearing arguments about the levels of care permissible. Volumes of law reports have been filled with judicial pronouncements on the meaning of “with due regard to”, “as far as is practicable” and “unborn”. A third of the alphabet has been deployed as pseudonyms for the names of women whose crisis pregnancies became the subject of litigation.

Continued: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/abortion-referendum/noel-whelan-bid-to-fix-abortion-law-in-constitution-did-not-work-1.3482939

Ireland’s abortion debates through the years

Ireland's abortion debates through the years

Friday, 27 Apr 2018
By David McCullagh

With four weeks to go until Ireland votes on the referendum on the Eighth Amendment on Friday 25 May, David McCullagh looks back on the contentious debates over Ireland's abortion legislation.

1861
Offences Against the Person Act makes it an offence unlawfully to administer poison or to use an instrument on any woman with intent to procure her miscarriage.

1967
British Abortion Act is passed legalising abortion up to 28 weeks’ gestation.

Continued: https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2018/0424/956963-abortion-timeline/

What’s Really At Stake In The Irish Abortion Referendum

What's Really At Stake In The Irish Abortion Referendum
For Irish women, abortion remains both illegal and taboo. As the country faces a historic referendum, Lynn Enright reflects on a nation’s changing mood, and a past decision of her own.

By Lynn Enright
Tuesday 24 April 2018

I was 31 and living in London when I had an abortion. On a grey morning, I took the Tube to the hospital and afterwards, I got an Uber home. My then boyfriend (who is now my husband) gave me a hot-water bottle and my flatmate brought me a cup of tea. My best friend texted me. “I love you,” she said. It was an everyday abortion but it hadn’t been an easy decision. I’d always wanted children and I’d hoped to be in a situation to have them at 31. But I wasn’t. The website I worked at had shut down the previous month and I was broke. I lived in a rented flat, sharing with two others. And my relationship was young and unsteady on its feet. So I had an abortion. Because it wasn’t the right time. Because it felt impossible to be pregnant, impossible to be a mother.

Continued: http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/the-story-of-us

Ireland’s abortion battle shows we must never let the fundamentalists win

Ireland’s abortion battle shows we must never let the fundamentalists win
Women have paid a terrible price for a law that gives the unborn the same rights as mothers

Suzanne Moore
Thu 8 Mar 2018

It’s a bugger when your flight is cancelled. It’s worse, I imagine, if you’re having to travel to another country to have an abortion. Time and money matter. When I saw that the recent snow had grounded flights from Ireland I immediately thought of this. Maybe I have never forgotten the time I sat next to an anxious young woman on a flight from Dublin who began to tell me why she was coming to London but couldn’t finish her sentences. She was just so alone that I wanted to go to the clinic with her. In the old days I remember seeing such women on the ferries.

Irish women have abortions, you see – they just don’t have them in their own country. Currently about nine women a day travel to the UK for terminations. Irish society knows of this export of hypocrisy, yet it continues to export its responsibility for human rights. Women pay the price.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/08/abortion-ireland-women-unborn-mothers