Editors' Introduction: Women's Health and Reproductive Justice in Ireland

Abstract

We began conceiving of this special issue in the heady weeks and months following the May 2018 vote to repeal the republic’s antiabortion Eighth Amendment (1983). For just a moment all things seemed possible in terms of Irish women’s health-care rights and realities. Even then, however, our training in reproductive justice— a framework created by American Black women encouraging us to move beyond a rights-based or legalistic framework to instead focus on intersectional access to women’s bodily autonomy and the real-world contexts of reproduction (Ross, Radical Reproductive Justice; Ross, “What Is Reproductive Justice?”; Sister Song; Silliman et al.)—cautioned us against being overly optimistic. In working and living in the United States, we knew firsthand that legality often is less important to abortion access than a person’s race or ethnicity, region, immigration status, and/or socioeconomic status. In late 2018, despite the referendum in the republic, the actual abortion legislation that would emerge was unclear. Moreover, Ireland’s healthcare system, especially for women, had long been, as Jo MurphyLawless’s work both here and previously has exposed, particularly dismal (Murphy-Lawless, “The Silencing of Women in Childbirth”; Murphy-Lawless, Reading Birth and Death). When limited legal abortion was introduced in the republic in early 2019, and, later that year, Northern Ireland took steps to decriminalize abortion, it became evident that actually providing abortion services island-wide would be a