Ruth Fletcher

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

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.

Silences: Irish Women and Abortion

This article considers the forces which act to prevent women in Ireland from speaking about their experiences of abortion. It considers the various forms such silencing can take and the complexity of feelings and circumstance which women who have had abortions are subject to. In so doing it raises important questions about the way public debate about abortion between pro-choice and pro-life arguments - couched in terms of rights - acts to further silence women. Finally, the article calls for the creation of a new public and intellectual space in which the complexities of the issues can be realized. A new public space such as this could then facilitate the enactment of permissive legislation which in turn could enable women to decide the best pregnancy option available for them at any particular moment in their lives.

LEGAL EMBODIMENT: ANALYSING THE BODY OF HEALTHCARE LAW

In this essay and the contributions that follow, we advocate an expansion of the parameters of mainstream healthcare law to include feminist analyses of embodiment. We suggest that a more thorough engagement with the meaning and value of embodiment can better inform normative assessment and critical appraisal in healthcare law. Laws conventional approach to regulating bodily interventions has been to consider the body as an object of analysis rather than as a category of analysis. In our view, legal analysis could offer a richer understanding of laws engagement with bodies and bodily materials if it adopted a thicker conception of embodiment. Such a conception would seek to account for the ways in which we value the living physical body as it enables our being in the world and our interactions with others. We argue that in framing our understandings of embodiment, healthcare law would benefit from employing cultural studies methods, as well as the bioethical analysis on which it has traditionally drawn. In particular, we view feminist scholarship on embodiment as a key resource for thinking through such a shift in parameters and methodology. Building on this work, we argue for a shift from more familiar notions of sexual difference to embodied differences. This would direct attention to the myriad ways in which law values or denigrates bodies and the choices we make about our bodies. We suggest that healthcare law has implicitly considered the body in three key ways—as an object of choice, a site of property and a source of vitality. We then argue that a more explicit conception of legal embodiment entails four key dimensions—subjective, intersubjective, material and symbolic—which in combination offer a normative and critical framework1 for deciding which values act as trumps in a given situation and for assessing how and why a particular value or combination of values come to be perceived as important in a given moment.

Peripheral Governance: Administering Transnational Health Care Flows

This paper develops the concept of peripheral governance as a kind of legal transnationalism that is being generated by responses to outward travel for health care. I argue for a recuperation of the ‘peripheral’ in order to think through the ways in which marginal actors and marginal objects contribute to transnationalism. The paper draws on the idea of networked governance, nodal governance in particular, to capture governance mechanisms that have emerged in response to outward flows for healthcare. Peripheral governance comes into being through the cultivation of dependency on core provision of healthcare in other jurisdictions and by focusing domestic provision on those services (information, counselling, check-ups), which lie on the margins of healthcare. Peripheral governance has 4 key technologies: non-development, exit, use and return. These technologies illustrate how state agencies may actively mobilise the peripheral as they claim to address local needs through participation in the regulation of cross-border health care. In so doing they configure a conception of the peripheral that does not want to become core, participates in transnational networks on its own terms, and focuses on marginal objects of healthcare. I develop this account of peripheral governance through a critical reading of the strategies that the Irish Crisis Pregnancy Agency has adopted in response to women’s practices of travelling for abortion care.

Introduction to ‘Sexual Movements and Gendered Boundaries: Legal Negotiations of the Global and the Local’:

This special issue examines the interplay between national and international legal arenas in the governance and regulation of gender and sexuality. For scholars of gender, sexuality and law, there is much to cheer at the international level. We might, for instance, celebrate the unprecedented visibility and activity of both feminist and lesbian and gay movements. The result of that increased profile is a strengthening of policy and laws governing a variety of social justice issues, from violence against women to HIV/AIDS. ‘Women’s rights as human rights’ has become a familiar slogan, bandied about by even the most unlikely international bureaucrat. Similarly, lesbian and gay rights, while hotly resisted by many, have attracted a phalanx of notable supporters. Influential human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have dedicated ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered’ departments, and the complex human rights machinery of the United Nations is increasingly recognizing and responding to human rights violations of lesbian and gay men (Wintemute, 1995; Sanders, 1996; Stychin, 2003; Miller and Vance, 2004). This increased visibility and an apparent erosion of traditional exclusions present opportunities and challenges for scholars and activists alike. For the contributors to this special issue (Bunting, 2005; Munro, 2005; De Vries, 2005; Doezema, 2005; Millbank, 2005) from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the UK, this new international climate represents not so much the end point of a progressive narrative, but, rather, the point of entry into the debate – a critical moment for asking new questions.