One story, two (very) different accounts.

Abortion and Nation Lisa Smyth (Ashgate Publishing, 2005, 196pp) 0-7546-3592-9, $94.95

Abortion and Divorce Law in Ireland Jennifer E. Spreng (McFarland & Co, 2004, 259pp) 0-7864-1657-0, $45.00

THE PROSPECT OF TWO MORE books dealing with the politics of abortion in Ireland is not a wildly exciting one for any prochoice activist. Volumes have already been written on this hotly contested subject, both by Irish writers with an intimate knowledge of the issue and by writers from other jurisdictions aiming to bring an outsider's eye to the debate, with varying degrees of success on both counts.

The two books reviewed here represent further attempts to understand Irish abortion politics from the outside. The first, by Lisa Smyth, is less of an outsider's account given that the author is based at the School of Sociology at Queen's University in Belfast. However, she writes from an academic rather than an activist perspective. From the start, it is clear that, as with most other writers on this topic, she is not value-neutral. Her depiction of Irish abortion law as "a coercive anti-abortion regime" and her critique of the antiabortion movement indicate that she is writing from a prochoice and indeed feminist perspective. Her focus, however, is very specific. She explores the construction of an antiabortion nationhood in Ireland around the 1983 referendum, which amended the Constitution to give a fetus an equal "right to life" status as a pregnant woman. She then examines how that sense of nationhood was changed in popular political culture following the 1992 "X" case, when the Irish Supreme Court held that a 14-year-old suicidal rape victim was entitled to have an abortion where the pregnancy posed a threat to her life.

While Smyth's discussion of the relationship between abortion and nationhood is unwieldy at times for a non-sociological reader, this is a well-researched and thoughtful book that raises many questions for the Irish feminist and prochoice movements. Smyth argues that an "anti-abortion commonsense" was produced in the 1983 amendment campaign, partly through orchestrating a moral panic against abortion. She then documents the destabilization of this antiabortion hegemony in the national public and press reaction to the "X" case in 1992, providing useful analysis of key parliamentary debates and media commentary along the way.

There are, however, some notable errors or misinterpretations in the text. On the first page, the Irish Times is described as "the liberal left wing national newspaper." While it is relatively liberal, few would identify this rather pompous organ as left wing. More seriously, she asserts on page 26 that three out of five Supreme Court judges in the "X" case held that the injunction originally issued by the High Court to prevent "X" from traveling to England for an abortion was an unwarranted interference in her family's private affairs. That is simply not true. The decision allowing "X" to terminate her pregnancy was based on balancing her right to life against the fetus's right to life.

More frustratingly, there is a marked lack of context provided. Certainly, Smyth cannot be criticized for her focus upon the 1983 referendum and the 1992 "X" case--both are key events. But some sense of the lead-up to the 1983 amendment and some reference to the campaign for abortion rights which continued actively between 1983 and 1992 would have been helpful. Instead, Smyth glibly states that there was no feminist campaign for abortion access in Ireland before 1983. Her account of the 1983 campaign thus misses the critical point that it was initiated by the antichoice lobby as a response to what they saw as the growing threat from an emerging feminist movement, which had made reproductive rights a campaigning focus.

Similarly important as context for the 1983 referendum was the key Supreme Court decision in McGee v. Attorney General (1974), in which legislation prohibiting contraception was overturned on the basis that married couples had a constitutional fight to privacy over their family planning decisions. This case was another catalyst for the antichoice movement, which saw it as potentially leading to a Roe v. Wade-type judgment legalizing abortion based on women's privacy rights. In other words, the 1983 amendment did not occur in a vacuum and the prochoice movement was not quite as absent from the flay as Smyth asserts.

She makes further criticism of the prochoice campaign in her discussion of post-"X" case political developments, in particular the 2002 referendum (which was defeated, but if passed would have reversed the "X" case by ruling out suicidal risk as a ground for abortion). She notes that in the public debates around abortion before 2002, some prochoice groups flamed their arguments in terms of women's health needs, rather than women's reproductive rights. In this way, she suggests that a sort of "compassionate nationhood" was invoked, which would not provide for access to abortion as a necessary aspect of a woman's right to bodily autonomy, but would rather provide "grateful" women with access to abortion only in very restrictive circumstances.

This would be a fair criticism, except that throughout the 1990s, other prochoice groups like the Dublin Abortion Rights Group (which is not mentioned) explicitly campaigned for abortion access in terms of women's rights. Her criticism also ignores the fact that prochoice groups won the argument in 2002 and defeated the referendum in the face of a concerted campaign by the majority government party Fianna Fail, the Catholic hierarchy and the so-called Pro-Life Campaign--quite an achievement.

Smyth acknowledges in her conclusion that the prochoice "pragmatic framing strategy" was necessary in order to be taken seriously, but argues that the marginalization of arguments in favor of women's reproductive autonomy makes the recognition of such autonomy less likely. She provides no evidence to back up this claim, and I am not sure she is right. In countries where abortion has been legalized, prochoice activists have often flamed arguments in terms of women's health needs, and it seems this approach can be more successful than a purely rights-based campaign in winning over a middle ground of public opinion.

Of course it is easy to be hyper-critical of a book about a campaign in which the reviewer has been involved as an activist for many years. Overall, Smyth's analysis makes a useful contribution to the debate on abortion, and prochoice campaigners will find it interesting and generally informative.

THE SAME CANNOT BE SAID FOR THE second book, Kentucky lawyer Jennifer Spreng's discussion of abortion and divorce law in Ireland. This reviewer's heart sank on reading the opening line, "I discovered my Irish roots in 1995." Apparently this happened when Spreng was listening to music by the Irish folk band, The Chieftains. Some nauseatingly rose-tinted views of Irish culture follow. Spreng then nails her ideological colors to the mast--far more clearly than Smyth, and they are very different colors.

In her introduction, she explains how inspiring it is to see the ongoing influence of Catholic teaching in Irish law and society. She refers to Eamon de Valera, former taoiseach (prime minister) and president of Ireland, as having produced a "constitution of genius," and she admiringly describes one leading antichoice campaigner as having "almost single-handedly stemmed the tide of liberalism in Irish family law that has washed over the rest of Western Europe." It was an effort to continue reading beyond this point.

For anyone who perseveres, they will find an irritating mix of legal analysis, mixed in with antiabortion and antidivorce rhetoric. Spreng writes honestly enough that Irish abortion law is "ideologically inconsistent and ... open to the criticism that it is somewhat irresponsible, in that it 'resolves' the underlying philosophical problem by exporting its consequences to other European countries where abortion is legal as evidenced by the thousands of Irish women who seek abortions in Britain and elsewhere every year." However, she argues that the law represents a compromise between "the English legacy of liberal democracy and homegrown Catholic communitarianism" and argues that this "balance" is preferable to the US emphasis on individualism.

It is hard to take these arguments seriously, since Spreng ultimately concludes that abortion will become wholly unnecessary within the foreseeable future due to technological advances in contraception. She asserts finally that Americans should look to Ireland as leading the way to a "postabortion society." Try telling that to the 7,000 Irish women who make the journey to England for abortion each year.

IVANA BACIK is the Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin (previously held by former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and current president, Mary McAleese). When studying law at Trinity and president of the Students' Union there (1989-90), she was taken to court by the antiabortion Society for the Protection of Unborn Children for providing information about abortion in a case that paved the way for legal change in favor of women's rights.