Post‐colonial Fragments: Representations of Abortion in Irish Law and Politics

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00203
Date01 December 2001
Published date01 December 2001
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 28, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 2001
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 568–89
Post-colonial Fragments: Representations of Abortion in
Irish Law and Politics
Ruth Fletcher*
The Republic of Ireland has become infamous for its legal stance
against abortion, especially since it went as far as stopping, albeit
temporarily, a young rape victim from travelling abroad for an
abortion in 1992. I argue that one of the rationales behind anti-
abortion law is a post-colonial urge to mark Irishness distinctively by
constructing it in exclusively `pro-life'terms. I discuss examples of how
Irish colonial experiences have been used to justify the effort to keep
Ireland abortion-free, and to resist that effort. Representations of
colonial history in the context of Irish abortion law and politics have
changed over time and between groups. Such changes indicate a need
for post-colonial critique to account for the fragmentation of
colonialism as it is displaced, a need which the conceptualization of
post-coloniality as a historical object can address.
INTRODUCTION
The Republic of Ireland has become infamous for the extremity of its anti-
abortion policy since the adoption of a ‘pro-life’ amendment in 1983.
1
In 1992
the High Court decision to stop a young rape victim from travelling abroad to
obtain an abortion caused national controversy and international outrage.
2
Although this decision was overturned on appeal and a legal reform process
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* Department of Law, Keele University, Keele ST5 5BG, Staffordshire, England
Particular thanks to Brenda Cossman, Shelley Gavigan, Les Green, Ambreena Manji,
Michael McKinnie, Michael Thomson, and the anonymous referees for their helpful
suggestions and critical comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the
Gender Studies Forum, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in September 2000 as
part of the Leverhulme-funded Gender, Sexuality and Law Interchange. Thanks to the
participants for their insightful questions and feedback.
1 The so-called ‘pro-life’ amendment was the eighth amendment to the Irish
Constitution (Bunreacht na hEireann), 1937, the text of which is discussed below
at p. 576.
2Attorney General v. X and others [1992] 1 I.R. 1.
has since been initiated,
3
the question remains as to why the Irish state has
rejected the European trend towards liberalizing abortion access. In this paper
I show how Irish colonial history is part of the explanation for a conservative
abortion policy which constitutionally protects the right to life of the
‘unborn’.
4
I argue that this unusual stance reflects in part a post-colonial desire
to construct a culturally authentic ‘pro-life’ Irishness in opposition to what has
been perceived as a British
5
colonial pro-choice culture. This Western
European state has gone to the extreme of legally endorsing the absolute
protection of fetal life because anti-abortion policy operates as a symbol of
Irish post-coloniality. However, as I will show, the effects of post-coloniality
on anti-abortion discourses vary depending on the context in which they are
formed. Sometimes abortion law and politics has put Irish colonial history to
work by constructing Irishness as needing protection from infiltration by the
‘Protestant’ pro-choice values of the former colonial power. At other times we
see an emphasis on the need to protect Irishness from exploitation by the
reproductive service providers of the former colonizer. On yet other occasions
we see pro-choice critics of anti-abortion policy adapt the colonial legacy to
support their critique as they depict abortion as an ancient native practice, or
represent the ill-treatment of abortion-seeking women as ‘colonial’. These
arguments show that Irish post-coloniality is part of the historical backdrop to
abortion politics, but they also show that the effects of colonial history change
over time and between agents.
In acknowledging the impact of post-coloniality on aspects of abortion
law and politics since the adoption of the eighth amendment to the
Constitution, my aim is to clarify one of the reasons why pro-choice
arguments have not been well received historically by the Irish public. If
post-colonial critique can cast some light on how abortion has become
dominantly constructed as antithetical to Irish culture, then pro-choice
arguments might be reformulated in a more persuasive fashion. In order to
understand how abortion has come to be understood as a barbarous practice
569
3 All Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, Fifth Progress Report –
Abortion (2000).
4 I have chosen to use the terms ‘unborn’ and ‘pro-life’ throughout this article
interchangeably with the terms ‘fetus’ and ‘anti-abortion’ because they are
incorporated into the legal language of abortion regulation in Ireland. However, I
have used quotation marks for the terms ‘unborn’ and ‘pro-life’ to indicate that they
are problematic. Their chief problems lie in their conceptual vagueness and in the
implication that those who accept abortion are against life.
5 Sometimes the post-colonial opposition is constructed as Irish/English, other times it
is constructed as Irish/British so that there is an interesting slippage between ‘English’
and ‘British’. Robert Young describes ‘British’ as a ‘cunning word of apparent
political correctness invoked in order to mask the metonymic extension of English
dominance over the other kingdoms with which England has conducted illicit acts of
union’, R. Young, Colonial Desire (1995) 3. In Irish studies, ‘English’ and ‘British’
are often used interchangeably, while the terms ‘Scottish’ and ‘Welsh’ are referred to
as such rather than as British.
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