Paper short abstract:

This study explores how abortion seekers, providers and advocates on the island of Ireland activate newly legalized abortion care, mobilising new formations of doing citizen while undoing longstanding formations of reproducing bodies/re-producing Irishness.

Paper long abstract:

Until 2019, abortion was illegal, with little exception, on both parts of the island of Ireland with the laws dating from the Offences Against the Person Act (1861), a vestige of British colonial law. However, in each country, very different approaches changed the law. In the Republic of Ireland, the process involved a Citizens Assembly, a government committee and a referendum of all citizens. In Northern Ireland, as the Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended, the UK government, based in Westminster, introduced new legislation. This study explores how these different processes are shaping how abortion seekers, providers and advocates activate newly legalized abortion care; mobilizing new formations of doing citizen while undoing longstanding formations of reproducing bodies/re-producing Irishness. Legalising abortion on the island of Ireland entails mobilising, enacting and doing reproductive citizenship towards a new ordinary. An ordinary Irish abortion. The paper sketches out conceptual frameworks we are plugging in to fieldwork including narrations of abortion and artistic interventions effecting doing/undoing new and old formations of reproductive citizenship.