ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

‘To inform, not frighten’: Visual cultures of anti-abortion activism in 1980s and early 1990s Ireland

• In Event: Representing Pregnancy: Science and Culture in the 20th Century 1

English Abstract

The Irish anti-abortion movement was catalysed in the late 1970s by debates around the legalisation of contraception which occurred in 1979. In 1981, the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign was founded to campaign for the introduction of an amendment to the Irish constitution to enshrine protection for the life of the unborn child. Irish campaigners were both inspired and influenced by international campaigners, particularly those based in the United States such as Father Paul Marx, Dr. Jack and Barbara Willke, and Dr. Bernard Nathanson. Over subsequent decades, tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of visual materials such as slides, films, posters were imported into Ireland. These became important tools for campaigners in trying to convey ideas around foetal personhood, erasing the female pregnant body, and what one Irish campaigner described as ‘the emotive truth’ around abortion.
This paper explores the role of such visual material in Irish campaigns around abortion in the 1980s and early 1990s, focusing on the role of slideshows and films which were shown in community centres, church halls, schools and the homes of female activists. The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) argued that the purpose of such slideshows was ‘to inform, not frighten’, ‘to discuss, not indoctrinate’, and ‘to enlighten, not moralise’. However, as I will show, such visual materials often generated debate in the Irish media around the emotions they produced. The paper thus shows that while films and slides were persuasive campaigning tools which also helped to mobilise activists, there were significant tensions around their use in the Irish context.

Author

• Laura Kelly, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow