Abortion in the Republic of Ireland

Bibliographic Data

ID3207413
AuthorsUrsula Barry (0000-0002-5330-9373, corresponding author)
Year1988
Issue29
Pages57
Publication date1988-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1395147
OpenAlexW4253740404
LanguageEN
Citations received13

The year 1980 marked a turning point in the Irish Republic in the debate over reproductive rights. It was the year when contraception was finally legalized, albeit in a restricted form. Women's organizations had been to the forefront in successive campaigns for full legalization through the 1970s. The new Act was a highly restrictive and unworkable piece of legislation: to get contraceptives, you were supposed to be married and to have a medical prescription. Ironically, family planning clinics had been defying the law right through the seventies. They had managed to exploit a loophole in the law, highlighted by a constitutional case in 1973, allowing contraceptives for 'personal use' but prohibiting their importation, sale and promotion. Despite the restrictive nature of the new legislation, right-wing forces within the State interpreted the change as a major and ominous defeat. It represented the first real break, in the area of social legislation, between the laws of the State and the teachings of the Catholic Church. Whereas in other countries the Catholic Church had been forced to accept new and changing social realities, in the Irish Republic it has stubbornly maintained the most rigid positions on 'mixed religion' marriages, contraception, divorce, abortion and sexuality. In the process, it spawned myriad right-wing, fundamentaliststyle Catholic organizations. They are its front line. Family Solidarity, the Responsible Society, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) and others are the new face of Catholicism. Alliances have been formed with older, more established organizations of the right, such as Opus Dei and the Knights of Columbanus. All these organizations share an obsession with and a fear of human sexuality: they oppose divorce, sterilization, contraception, abortion and homosexuality

Abortion · Biology · Feminism · Human sexuality · Political science · Pregnancy · Sociology · Anthropology · Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Irish and British Studies · Reproductive Health and Contraception

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