Regulating abortion information in Ireland: censorship, provision and resistance

Farrell, Alana ORCID: 0009-0006-9011-108X (2024). Regulating abortion information in Ireland: censorship, provision and resistance. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis is an analysis of how and why anti-abortion information controls were created and sustained through Irish law and later challenged and overturned. In the first part of the thesis, I address why information restrictions were created. Two dominant factors influenced the establishment and endurance of censorship and information controls. The first was a belief that abortion endangered vulnerable foetal life and pregnant people. As such information that challenged the hegemonic anti-abortion views or that facilitated abortion was constructed by the Irish state and anti-abortion proponents as similarly endangering these vulnerable subjects. To protect these subjects, such pro-choice or assistive information required legal suppression. The second reason involved the belief that the law should reflect the community’s principles, beliefs or morals. Suppressing information that was counter to such views was necessary to affirm those views and to inoculate them from challenge. The methods chosen by the State to curtail the creation and dissemination of pro-choice or non- directive information involved prohibiting certain publications and advertisements through the Indecent Advertisements Act 1889 and Censorship of Publications Acts 1929 and 1946. The law also criminalised some referrals and abortion facilitation through the Offences Against the Persons Act 1861 and the Regulation of Information (Services Outside State for Termination of Pregnancies) Act 1995. The Eighth Amendment was also used by anti-abortion actors to curtail non-directive counselling provision through the Open Door and Grogan cases. The Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 repealed many anti-abortion restrictions. However, the legacies of paternalistic information controls remain through its failure to decriminalise abortion and the mandatory three-day waiting period. In the second part of the thesis, I address mechanisms involved in undermining anti-abortion information controls. The first was that censorship is difficult to enforce, so the infrastructure ends up undermining its own purposes. This occurs through censorship generating publicity for the information sources that it wishes to suppress. Furthermore, censorship is a resource-heavy initiative that can never remove all instances of contested or criminalised information. Therefore, opportunity remains for those opposed to controls, to undermine or subvert them. The second is that by justifying censorship as needed to protect vulnerable subjects, anti-information control advocates could attack the foundations of the system by demonstrating that it causes harm to those subjects instead. This undermines popular support for controls and increases pressure on legislators to disavow and dismantle censorship frameworks.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):