Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Embodying Irish Abortion Reform has been shortlisted for the 2025 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize.
Offering a unique perspective, this book explores the lived, embodied and affective experiences of reproductive rights activists living under, and mobilizing against, Ireland’s constitutional abortion ban.
Through qualitative research and in-depth interviews with activists, the author exposes the subtle influence of the 8th Amendment on Irish women and their (reproductive) bodies, whether or not they have ever attempted to access a clandestine abortion.
It explains how the everyday embodied practices, bodily labours and affective experiences of women and gestating people were shaped by the 8th amendment and through the need to ‘prepare’ for crisis pregnancies. In addition, it reveals the integral role of women’s bodies and emotions in changing the political and social landscape in Ireland, through the historical transformation of the country’s abortion laws.
"Aideen O’Shaughnessy’s research on abortion politics in Ireland is insightful and timely. This important book will surely find resonance in other parts of the world where activists are fighting for legal, safe and accessible abortion. The author’s attention to the embodied and emotional dimensions of abortion politics illuminates both activist experiences as well as the negative impacts of restrictive abortion laws. Through rich empirical analyses and original concepts, such as ‘abortion work’ and ‘gestural dress’, the book throws into relief the injustices associated with abortion bans and the power of embodied activism to change culture, society, and the law." Barbara Sutton, SUNY Albany
“A crucial analysis of Ireland’s Repeal movement. Building on a rich testimonial and academic heritage, O’Shaughnessy offers new framings of the most influential Irish social movement in decades.” Máiréad Enright, University of Birmingham
1. Introduction
2. Living Under the 8th: the Gendered Burden of ‘Abortion Work’
3. Tracing the ‘Embodied Infrastructure’ of the Movement to Repeal the 8th Amendment.
4. On the Physicality of Protest: The Politics of Revelation
5. Embodying Respectability: The Politics of Concealment
6. Changed Bodies? Life After Repeal
7. Conclusion