UCSB Anthropology Brown Bag Lecture Series Presents:

Irishness, Eurocitizenship, and the Troubled Politics of Irish Reproductive Rights

By Layry Oaks

Activists, legal experts, and politicians have vigorously debated abortion and its meaning in Irish society and in Ireland's health policy throughout the 1980s and '90s. The Republic of Ireland established constitutional protection of the right to life of the fetus by popular referendum in 1983, buttressing the criminalization of abortion established in 1861 (under the Offenses Against the Person Act). Pro-life advocates designed the "Pro-Life Amendment" to keep abortion from ever becoming a legal practice in Ireland. Despite this, an estimated 4,000-7,000 Irish women annually travel abroad (mainly to England and often in great secrecy), to obtain abortion services. Taking the public reaction to two court cases that challenged Ireland's abortion ban as its focus, this paper explores how the complex and passionate protests over Ireland's membership in the European Union reveal multiple ways in which reproduction conveys core meanings around citizenship, gender, nationalism, ethnicity, and the renegotiation of cultural identities. This research is based on ethnographic interviews and participant-observation conducted in Dublin in the summers of 1992, 1993 and 1998.



Monday February 8, 1999; 1 p.m.
HSSB 2001A, The Anthropology Conference Room

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