Yes, to Repeal the Eighth Amendment
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Yes, to Repeal the Eighth Amendment How the pro-choice movements organized prior to the success in the Irish Referendum 2018 Viktoria Hallmans Bachelor thesis Department of Government Uppsala University, Fall 2018 Supervisor: Katrin Uba Words: 12499 Pages: 40 Abstract This thesis investigates the pro-choice movements organization prior to the referendum in Ireland 2018 to Repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which meant a legalization of abortion for women in Ireland. It is clear that the different pro-choice movements had a major impact on the referendum as they won a great victory. However, no previous studies have been made to analyze the organization structure and form of the engaged pro-choice movements. Therefore, this thesis analyzes the pro-choice movements own platforms to distinguish how they are organized and their pattern of coalition between each other, as coalition is an important factor for social movements to affect the policy. The finding of 97 pro-choice movements prior to the referendum have been analyzed to tell whether they are considered to be informal, more mobile and unstructured form, and formal movements, with established routines and procedures, to achieve success. The result shows that the majority of the engaged pro-choice movement can be qualified as informal, however the formal movements might have played an important role to form a coalition between different movements. It seems that the in the Irish pro-choice movement both informal and formal organization structure had a meaning for changing the stigma of abortion. 2 Table of Contents 1.Introduction ....................................................................................... 4 1.1 The Irish Abortion History ................................................................ 6 2. Theoretical framework ..................................................................... 8 2.1 Previous research on Social Movements ........................................ 8 2.2 Professionalization and Formalization of Social Movement Organizations ....................................................................................... 10 2.3 Coalition ......................................................................................... 14 3. Research design and method ....................................................... 16 3.1 Research design ............................................................................ 16 3.2. Method for data collection ............................................................. 17 3.3 Operationalization .......................................................................... 18 3.3.1 Operationalization Formalization ................................................ 19 3.3.2 Operationalization Coalition ........................................................ 21 3.4 Social Network Analysis ................................................................. 22 3.5 Analytical tool ................................................................................. 23 3.5.1 Ten-degree scale of formalization .............................................. 24 4. Results and Analysis ..................................................................... 25 4.1 Overall Results ............................................................................... 25 4.2 Discussion of the results ................................................................ 30 5. Conclusions and further research ............................................... 33 6. References ...................................................................................... 34 7. Appendix ......................................................................................... 38 3 1.Introduction On the 25th of May 2018, a majority of the Irish citizens voted Yes to Repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution (Article 40.3.3). The referendum ended a long era of the country’s strict ban on abortion under almost any circumstance (Field, 2018). The new legislation will make it legal for women in the Republic of Ireland to have an abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy without any restriction and up to 24 weeks if the mother's health is at risk (Laffoy, 2017). Irish women will no longer be forced to travel overseas to have an abortion or to buy illegal black-market abortion pills to take by themselves at home (Hinsliff, 2018). Scholars on democratic policies agree that Social Movement Organizations (SMOs), interest groups and political parties all influence public policy (Burstein and Linton, 2002). The pro- choice movement campaigning had a major impact on forcing the referendum in 2018 on to the political agenda. The referendum campaign was a strategic engagement by civil society actors and the liberalization of the abortion laws was made possible by well-organized civil society groups which could use the platform of the referendum as provider of public engagement (Enright et al, 2015). The pro-choice movement also gained the support from major political parties, which has been important for the success of the civil society campaign (Field, 2018). We already know that the pro-choice movement have succeeded with their goal to legalize abortion. Therefore, we must first look at their organization structure and form to see if it has any meaning for the success of the pro-choice movement in Ireland, as the structure of the organization will have an impact on the productivity of a social movement (Amenta et al, 2010). The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the organization structure of the pro-choice movement is and how the coalition structure looked like prior the Irish referendum 2018. Previously research on pro-choice movements have showed that the most successful movements have been professionalized and formalized with the ability to maintain broad coalitions. However, in the 2018 Irish referendum it might have been less need for formalized and professionalized movements as the technology of communication has changed the way to spread information. Rather it been the informal movements who have spread the information through social media and such, to challenge the stigma of abortion in Ireland. On the other hand, formalization and professionalization might have been unavoidable as the 4 mobilization for the pro-choice movement has been existing for a long term since the Eighth Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1983. The formalized movements might have acted as a connection between the less formal and had an important part in the coalition building. Therefore, the research question for this thesis will be the following: How is the pro-choice movement organized in Ireland? The pro-choice movements’ coalition in the Irish referendum 2018 will be analyzed according to Tarrow’s (2011) theory on coalition, and Staggenborg’s (1988) theory on professionalized and formalized Social Movement Organizations and the effect it has on coalition. As far as I know, no previously research have been made about the meaning of the social movements organizations structure and form in the pro-choice movement in Ireland. However, it has been stated that the pro-choice campaigning had an impact to win in the referendum. This research will answer if the success of the pro-choice movement will exist with or without formalization and if the coalitions between the different movements is dependent on it. All the information about the pro-choice movements will be retrieved from their own websites (Facebook or Twitter in case they do not have any website) to tell us whether they been formalized or not and how they organized themselves in the abortion campaign. Three methods will be used in order to answer the research question, Collection Action Organization (AOA), Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Quantitative Content Analysis, to located formalization in the pro-choice movement. The AOA is the approach to collected data from each organization, the SNA will be used to make a visual graph of the Irish pro-choice movements coalition and the Quantitative Content Analysis will be used for analyzing the collected data. These methods together will tell us the information about which organizations cooperates the most with others and if their ability to sustain networks are depending on whether formalization is important or not for the success to Repeal the Eighth Amendment. Depending on the result we either have reason to believe formalization and professionalization is of importance for success, or not as it might be other tactics more useful for the success of a pro-choice movement. 5 1.1 The Irish Abortion History The Irish legislation ban on abortion was first ratified in the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act (eISBa). However, in 1983, the Eighth Amendment was added to the Constitution and was approved by a majority of the voters in a referendum, which banned abortion during almost all circumstances. The campaigning for the strict abortion law was held by pro-life groups, as they were afraid of more liberal abortion laws like the British legislation of abortion in 1967 (Field, 2018). Since then, there have been a number of cases highlighted by the media. An example is the” x case” in the 1990’s when a rape victim became suicidal when she was not allowed to travel overseas to have an abortion. This court case started protests from both pro-life and pro- choice activist and resulted in a referendum which made it legal to travel overseas for an abortion. Additionally, information was also to be given to women about options in other countries where women