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NILQ 71(3): OA7–OA33 Abortion activism, legal change, and taking feminist law work seriously MÁIRÉAD ENRIGHT KATHRYN MCNEILLY FIONA DE LONDRAS * Abstract Abortion laws in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have recently undergone radical reform. This occurred following a 2018 referendum in the Republic and the passing of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 in Northern Ireland. In both jurisdictions, these legal changes are the products not only of moments of constitutional and legislative action or of litigation, but of decades of feminist protest and strategising that both generated and exploited moments of legal opportunity. In this article, drawing on a 2018 workshop and qualitative interviews with feminist activists, we focus attention on what we call the ‘feminist law work’ involved in reform, highlighting the role of non-lawyer activists in achieving legal change in instrumental, creative, emotional, and laborious ways. We argue that ‘feminist law work’ should be taken seriously as a highly skilled and indispensable driving force in formal legal change processes. Keywords: abortion; activism; law reform; legal change; feminist law work; feminist legal studies; Ireland; Northern Ireland Interviewer: If I had to ask you, right now, what’s going on – what are you doing to change the law [on abortion], what would your answer be? Kellie O’Dowd (activist, Alliance for Choice): What are we not doing? ver the last two years, the law on access to abortion has changed substantially in both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, the 8th Amendment Oto the Constitution was repealed and replaced with a constitutional provision permitting the Oireachtas to regulate the termination of pregnancy, which was achieved with the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018.
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