| Abstract: | This article explores the ramifications of the 1992 "X Case" in which an Irish High Court rescinded the constitutional right to travel of a 14-year-old rape victim who intended to obtain an abortion in England. The article opens by noting that this decision made the subordinate role of women in Ireland painfully visible, thus allowing Irish feminists to win a degree of national and international support. The article examines newspaper coverage of the injunction to consider how this abortion issue reconstituted discourses of women's status, sexuality, and national identity in Ireland. The article provides background information on women's role in Ireland, relegated by the Constitution to the domestic sphere, and reviews the origins of the 1983 "pro-life" Constitutional amendment. Next the article considers how the discourse surrounding the child's rape and resulting pregnancy submerged the autonomy of the child in the victimhood of her family. The article continues by looking at the internal and international denouncement of the Irish state for its action and the responding Irish construct of a civilized "us" versus a barbaric "other." This was countered by appeals to "the people's" will and reinterpretations of the 1983 amendment to justify a more pragmatic approach to public policy about rape that would de-emphasize the moral status of the fetus. After showing how feminist protest extended the questions raised to embrace the issue of national identity and women's citizenship rights, the article concludes that the battle for female reproductive and sexual hegemony in Ireland continues. |
