I saw this headline as I was reading the news about reproductive politics: "Bishop, pro-lifers concerned that abortion may widen in Ireland."
The headline is from an article in the Catholic News Service. The pro-life activists and Catholic religious leaders quoted in the article say all of the things one would expect. In particular, they take the position that the recent controversy over Ireland's abortion law and concomitant guidelines for physicians are clear enough as is and therefore do not need to be revised-- and were not the cause of Dr. Savita Halappanavar's death from a miscarriage.
Like many people, I've been watching and analyzing events in Ireland with close interest, and perhaps we are getting to diminishing returns in discussing it. Still, it seems to continue to yield insights about reproductive politics generally.
For example, the situation in Ireland shows how the terms of the debate over reproductive politics can differ so widely from country to country, even countries that have surface similarities. The center point of the discussion in Ireland is over how to limit abortions to a life-saving procedure for pregnant women. How incredibly different this is from the United States, for example. It is also remarkably different from many European Catholic countries-- France, for one, and Luxembourg, for another, which just recently liberalized its abortion laws.
While these countries appear so different legally, politically, and culturally, however, it is less clear that these differences result in as stark a divergence in the actual occurrence of abortion as we might presume. The pro-life activists quoted in the article a) act like no Irish women are getting abortions now, and b) no Irish women are getting abortions in Ireland now.
It is very clear that many Irish women travel to the UK every year for abortions. So the question in Ireland is not so much whether Irish women will be able to obtain an abortion. Instead, the question is where the abortion will occur and how much more difficult and expensive it will be. The phenomenon of women traveling to obtain an abortion is not at all unusual-- in fact, it happens in the United States, where the problem isn't legality-- the problem is access to a clinic near where one lives.
Now, among Irish women who don't have the money, time, and support to travel to the UK on short notice, there may be a higher ratio of births-to-terminations. Put another way, for many women, the hassle of getting an abortion in a safe facility in the UK may be enough to cause them to carry their pregnancies to term. Still, a well-known fact about abortion in human history is that many, many women will have abortions-- or die trying-- regardless of what the legal regime prohibits. I doubt Ireland is much different in that regard. For poor women, especially, abortion being illegal does not mean it doesn't occur. It just may occur surreptitiously under awful conditions (the proverbial 'back alley abortion'). The history of abortion in the United States before Roe is instructive.
In short, Ireland is held up as this model pro-life country, in part because of its laws, but Ireland and its people are not abortion free. No society is. Therefore, the danger that pro-life activists are worried about is not that "abortion may widen in Ireland." Instead, the danger is that the abortions that Irish women already have will happen openly, in safe facilities, in Ireland.
Links:
Article in the Catholic News Service (November 29, 2012): Bishop, pro-lifers concerned that abortion may widen in Ireland
Article in LifeSiteNews.com (November 23, 2012): Luxembourg legalises abortion on demand
The headline is from an article in the Catholic News Service. The pro-life activists and Catholic religious leaders quoted in the article say all of the things one would expect. In particular, they take the position that the recent controversy over Ireland's abortion law and concomitant guidelines for physicians are clear enough as is and therefore do not need to be revised-- and were not the cause of Dr. Savita Halappanavar's death from a miscarriage.
Like many people, I've been watching and analyzing events in Ireland with close interest, and perhaps we are getting to diminishing returns in discussing it. Still, it seems to continue to yield insights about reproductive politics generally.
For example, the situation in Ireland shows how the terms of the debate over reproductive politics can differ so widely from country to country, even countries that have surface similarities. The center point of the discussion in Ireland is over how to limit abortions to a life-saving procedure for pregnant women. How incredibly different this is from the United States, for example. It is also remarkably different from many European Catholic countries-- France, for one, and Luxembourg, for another, which just recently liberalized its abortion laws.
While these countries appear so different legally, politically, and culturally, however, it is less clear that these differences result in as stark a divergence in the actual occurrence of abortion as we might presume. The pro-life activists quoted in the article a) act like no Irish women are getting abortions now, and b) no Irish women are getting abortions in Ireland now.
It is very clear that many Irish women travel to the UK every year for abortions. So the question in Ireland is not so much whether Irish women will be able to obtain an abortion. Instead, the question is where the abortion will occur and how much more difficult and expensive it will be. The phenomenon of women traveling to obtain an abortion is not at all unusual-- in fact, it happens in the United States, where the problem isn't legality-- the problem is access to a clinic near where one lives.
Now, among Irish women who don't have the money, time, and support to travel to the UK on short notice, there may be a higher ratio of births-to-terminations. Put another way, for many women, the hassle of getting an abortion in a safe facility in the UK may be enough to cause them to carry their pregnancies to term. Still, a well-known fact about abortion in human history is that many, many women will have abortions-- or die trying-- regardless of what the legal regime prohibits. I doubt Ireland is much different in that regard. For poor women, especially, abortion being illegal does not mean it doesn't occur. It just may occur surreptitiously under awful conditions (the proverbial 'back alley abortion'). The history of abortion in the United States before Roe is instructive.
In short, Ireland is held up as this model pro-life country, in part because of its laws, but Ireland and its people are not abortion free. No society is. Therefore, the danger that pro-life activists are worried about is not that "abortion may widen in Ireland." Instead, the danger is that the abortions that Irish women already have will happen openly, in safe facilities, in Ireland.
Links:
Article in the Catholic News Service (November 29, 2012): Bishop, pro-lifers concerned that abortion may widen in Ireland
Article in LifeSiteNews.com (November 23, 2012): Luxembourg legalises abortion on demand
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