The fight for reproductive justice

On Friday 25 May 2018, Ireland repealed the 8ᵗʰ Amendment, a part of the constitution that equated the life of an unborn foetus with the person carrying it, making abortion legal only in cases where that person’s life was deemed to be at risk. This amendment was introduced by a referendum in September 1983, which asked the electorate to insert the pro-life article into an already deeply conservative constitution. Abortion and bodily autonomy have always been a focal point of feminist concern. In the seventies, Marxist feminists like Shulamith Firestone argued that because the family was linked to biology, women’s