Healthcare not airfare! Art, abortion and political agency in Ireland

Ireland's near-total abortion ban was, in effect, a policy of offshoring abortions. Before the May 2018 vote to repeal it, the 8th Amendment allowed for conservative and nationalist groups to celebrate the idea of Ireland as an 'abortion-free' territory, while forcing women to travel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Gender, place and culture : a journal of feminist geography place and culture : a journal of feminist geography, 2019-03, Vol.26 (3), p.338-361
Main Author: Calkin, Sydney
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abortion
Artists
Bans
Feminism
Geopolitics
Health care
Health services
Illegal abortion
Ireland
Liberalization
Nationalism
Offshoring
Political campaigns
Pro choice movement
protest
Public spaces
Rancière
Symbolism
Travel
Women
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Summary:Ireland's near-total abortion ban was, in effect, a policy of offshoring abortions. Before the May 2018 vote to repeal it, the 8th Amendment allowed for conservative and nationalist groups to celebrate the idea of Ireland as an 'abortion-free' territory, while forcing women to travel to England for abortion or self-manage abortions with illegal pills at home. Artists in the Irish pro-choice movement have contested the public silence around abortion and abortion-travel; in doing so they have disrupted the political narrative of 'abortion-free Ireland' by symbolically re-placing Irish abortion seekers in public spaces. These place-based artistic interventions have larger significance for the changing relationship between women, reproduction, and the state. Drawing on ongoing debates in critical and feminist geopolitics, this article addresses the relationship between geopolitics, art, and political agency to theorize the role of pro-choice Irish artworks in challenging the enforced silence that surrounded abortion travel. It builds on geographical engagement with Jacques Rancière to address the feminist geopolitics critique of geopolitical scales and sites of 'serious' geopolitics. The article examines three artworks that depict Irish women's experiences of abortion-related travel to England as part of the larger political campaign for liberalization of Ireland's abortion laws.
ISSN:0966-369X
1360-0524
DOI:10.1080/0966369X.2018.1552928