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Rights Versus Rites? Catholic Women and Abortion Access in Northern Ireland

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The Contested Identities of Ulster Catholics

Abstract

Pierson’s chapter addresses a topical and still fiercely contested issue for Irish Catholics. Gendered conceptualisations of nationalism present resonant imagery of women as mothers of the nation, often stereotyped in Irish nationalism through the highly Catholic image of the Virgin Mary. Viewing women’s key contributions to national identity through the role of motherhood creates assumed notions of nurturing and self-sacrificing identity. Abortion and its assumed rejection of motherhood crosses boundaries of ideal womanhood and as such is presented as abhorrent to Irish Catholic nationalism and to Irishness more widely on the island of Ireland. This chapter calls on liberal theological conceptions of Catholicism such as that voiced by Catholics for Choice to envision how abortion stigma could be broken down in Northern Ireland.

Data on political discourse on abortion were gathered as part of a British Academy Grant and are replicated here with permission of the Principal Investigator, Dr. Fiona Bloomer.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Whilst the author understands identity in Northern Ireland to be more complex than the simple binary of Catholic/Protestant, for the purposes of this chapter the terms Catholic, nationalist, republican and Protestant, unionist, loyalist are used for common understanding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Claire Pierson

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  1. Claire Pierson
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Correspondence to Claire Pierson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Thomas Paul Burgess

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Pierson, C. (2018). Rights Versus Rites? Catholic Women and Abortion Access in Northern Ireland. In: Burgess, T. (eds) The Contested Identities of Ulster Catholics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78804-3_4

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