The Unfinished Fight

In 2018, Ireland voted to repeal the 8th Amendment of its constitution, which stated that a person and the foetus living inside their body had an equal right to life. Yet the struggle around abortion is not over in Ireland, or indeed anywhere else – a fact underscored by the dramatic overturning of Roe v. Wade this year, effectively banning abortion in half of US states.

In Repealed: Ireland’s Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights, author and activist Camilla Fitzsimons documents the successes and the failures of the Repeal the 8th campaign and explains why the right to abortion cannot exist in a vacuum: class, race and legal status are just some of the factors that complicate the familiar demand of “my body, my choice”.

Fitzsimons speaks to Rivkah Brown about the untidy conclusions of the campaign, why morality is the wrong terrain on which to fight, and the growing threat to abortion rights in the UK.