After Repeal: Rethinking Abortion Politics

<p>Two years after Ireland voted by a large majority to repeal the 8th amendment—an article inserted into the Constitution in 1983 which enshrined the ‘equal rights’ of the pregnant woman and the ‘unborn’—and with the first official governmental review of abortion legislation imminent in 2021, Kath Browne and Sydney Calkin’s After Repeal: Rethinking Abortion Politics comes at a decisive moment in the movement for abortion rights in Ireland. Divided neatly into three distinct but well-integrated sections, Browne and Calkin’s edited collection traces the historical and political trajectory of the movement for abortion in Ireland and examines the social and cultural significance of the repeal of the 8th amendment, before finally situating Irish pro-choice activism within broader global trends. Combining testimony and analyses from activists and academics in the fields of sociology, law and geography, primarily, After Repeal aims—and for the most part, succeeds—to deliver an overview of the ‘past, present and future’ of reproductive justice campaigning in Ireland.</p>