We are pleased to welcome the latest in our series of reponses to the judgment in A, B & C v. Ireland. This post is written by Dr. Morgan Healey of the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand. The PhD research to which he refers was published here.

Almost a month after the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) held that Ireland had violated the human rights of one of the plaintiffs in the ABC v Ireland case, there is little indication of how the Irish government will deal with the ruling. What can be almost certain is that few politicians will be leading the charge for legislative change. In true consensus-driven political fashion, Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, once again refused to take a clear lead on the issue [see Irish Times article, 28/12/2010]. Abrogating his responsibility as a legislative official, he said that this topic should be dealt with through the all-party committee process and could result in a broad spectrum of recommendations, not least of which might be through another referendum.

Such a political response sounds unsettlingly familiar. In 1999, the then Fianna Fail led government produced the Green Papers on abortion. Out of five possible recommendations, the government of the day chose familiarity over political accountability, and for the fifth time put the onus on the electorate to decide on the substantive issue of abortion. In that instance, the 2002 referendum attempted to roll back the ruling in the X Case (which would have disallowed suicide as a legal means of procuring an abortion), a tactic that was rejected by the electorate. That was the last time the Irish government attempted to ‘deal’ with the issue of abortion, leaving women and doctors in the dark in terms of when abortion in permissible in Ireland.

So, when I hear Enda Kenny make comments about not making the ECHR ruling an immediate political priority I am left doubting the possibility of a progressive solution. Do I have a lot of confidence in the Irish political system and politicians to do something substantial and constructive this time around? While time will be the final judge, the activist and feminist researcher in me hopes for a moment to begin the process of reform that Irish women so desperately need and deserve.

And here is why I want to give some time to thinking through and analyzing my more optimist leanings. In 2007, I interviewed what were then seventeen sitting Irish women parliamentarians for my PhD research. While the overarching theme of my thesis was to understand how Irish women politicians construct a gendered political subjectivity for themselves, I used the issue of reproductive rights (read abortion) as a means of discerning if women politicians can (or want to) promote a more feminist-centred agenda.

What I learned was that Irish women politician’s positionality on abortion was complex.  The majority took a middle ground approach when discussing abortion with me. I referred to this as the ‘contextual sympathy frame”, neither totally pro-life but not necessarily pro-choice. ‘Contextual sympathy’ was more of a gray area in between the two, where many of the women expressed sympathy for women who find themselves pregnant unexpectedly, but who would not be comfortable with a system of ‘abortion on demand”. And this is the issue for many of them: trying to discuss their own complex position on abortion without resorting to the dominant pro-life discourse, which aligns a sense of Irishness with protecting the sanctity of life from outside forces. So even those that were willing to place themselves in the ‘pro-choice’ camp made a clear line in the sand between their liberal position and advocating for complete decriminalization.

Given the divisive and vitriolic tone of Irish abortion debates to date, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of the women were hesitant and almost fearful of discussing the issue at all. Several recounted the political bloodshed and recrimination associated with abortion, and for this reason most of the women professed personal as opposed to political views on the topic. Yet, even though they described their own positionality as conservative or cautionary, very few (three out of seventeen) were absolutely opposed to abortion. The rest believed that extenuating circumstances – fetal abnormality, rape, and incest, economic or personal situations – should be taken into consideration. So where does this leave us in terms of the ruling in the ECHR case and the next political battle over abortion?

It means that the probability of women politicians vocally supporting any reform beyond the confines of the ruling is slim. When you combine a dominant pro-life discourse that does not adequately capture their own positionality, with a heavily masculinised political environment that obscures the ability of pro-choice women politicians to discuss their own beliefs using compassionate, sympathetic language, there is little room for Irish women politicians to promote their contextual sympathy position. Yet, I do not think these women will be silent either.

Ultimately, the ruling in the ABC case, while seminal is not overly radical. What the women’s narratives illustrated was that most of them took a less than absolute pro-life position when it comes to abortion. As such, the women politicians will not necessarily have to stretch their own personal views much beyond legislating or setting guidelines to regulate for the instances when it is legal in Ireland for a woman to have an abortion. From what I heard from many of the women politicians this would not be something that they would be stringently opposed to.

And so I have hope. Not that women politicians will be leading the charge from the front on this particular issue, but that their quietly supportive positionality, one which allows for a sympathetic understanding of unintended or untenable pregnancies, can maneuver behind the scenes to ensure that at the very least some clarity is given to the current abortion law. It might be a small step for those of us who have been fighting for women’s human right to bodily autonomy for generations, but at least it would be a beginning. As one women politician said to me, “But you know one case can change things and you know we’re chipping away. And I think the fact that opinions are changing is a big thing. You know that’s been a huge step forward and most people now know somebody who’s had an abortion”. It is time to make a small but fundamental dent in the anti-choice armor. The ECHR recognized that the Irish government had violated the human rights of Irish women, it is high time Irish politicians do the same.