#34

 Heather Brunskell-Evans from FiLiA in conversation with Ailbhe Smyth, Irish feminist activist.

Heather: My name is Heather Brunskell-Evans. I am spokeswoman for FiLiA and today, and talking with Ailbhe Smyth who is an Irish feminist activist. Ailbhe I'm very honoured to speak to you. I have to say I've just been watching some of your YouTube. I'm very fired up about this. You spoke to the kinds of things that I'm very concerned about at the moment, so, but I would like you to explain to the listener what form your feminist activism takes in Ireland?

Ailbhe: Well, first of all, let me say Heather, it's a great pleasure to talk with you and to do a FiLiA podcast. 

The form, my activism takes is, I've been a feminist since probably the end of the 1970s, beginning of the eighties. So I do go back a long way and really the best way to describe it is to say, I feel that my activism takes whatever shape or form seems to be required in the place I'm in at whatever moment of time I’m in. A very constant thread of my own work has been looking, analysing and indicating what kinds of actions we should be taking because I was for a very long time an academic and set up women's studies in my university way back when it started. It started in the late seventies, early eighties.

 But also sort of thinking about how can we use those places that we have, that we do occupy as women, where we do have some influence, if not always a lot of power, how can we use those places to open them up to feminist knowledge and thinking and acting and also open them up physically and materially to more women.

So that was very much my view with the university, but it's also true that it's what I think about in relation to political systems more broadly, or any kinds of institutions, but in Ireland we have had, since the beginning of the eighties, a really, really draconian abortion regime, which I think a lot of women are very aware of. A lot of women elsewhere are very, very aware of. Abortion was completely prohibited except to save a woman's life by a constitutional referendum that we had in 1983. And I think it's fair to say that among other issues that that fundamentally pro-choice issue that pro legislation on abortion issue has been a very, very, very constant thread in my own activist life for the past 35 going on 40 years now.

And that's not to say that I think it's the only issue, but this absolutely no doubt that when women don't have reproductive rights, when we don't have specifically access to abortion, that the very basic freedom that is so important to all of us in our lives is denied to us. And we do have to fight for it.

That's a rather long answer to your question. 

Heather: Long answers are good. We want to hear what you've got to say as you were speaking, I was just thinking that because we've had abortion rights in England, well, I suppose the UK apart from Northern Ireland, of course, which I think you'll come onto, it can be easily dismissed, the struggle that you've had for abortion rights in Ireland, because it feels far away. Because we've had these rights for so long now. So what's interesting about what you're saying is it's actually a very, very present struggle for you in Ireland. 

Ailbhe: Well, it was a very present struggle at first, but perhaps it's changed somewhat obviously since we won a tremendous victory just over a year ago in a referendum. But I would have to say that, you know, abortion rights for women world over are by no means a done deal. And in many countries where they have been taken for granted, they are now absolutely under threat. I only have to mention the USA, for people that should be very well aware of that just look at Poland.

 But also, I mean elsewhere in Europe, to think that Hungary is by no means safe. Germany has seen a lot of questioning about its abortion legislation in Italy. There's relatively good legislation, but incredibly bad actual abortion access for women where hospitals say they don't have the staff or that the staff would have conscientious objections. And it can be very, very, very difficult for women, even in many European countries. Malta doesn't have abortion at all to access. 

So it's really interesting to see abortion, which has been such a salient issue for us in Ireland, that it has never gone away as a problem in so many other parts of the world and that it is increasingly under attack at the moment that right in countries where it had apparently been achieved or realised, and it's under attack because of course, with the rise of right-wing or extreme right-wing populist movements, women's bodies and sexuality more broadly I'm lesbian. So, you know, I also do a lot of LGBTIQ activism.

It's that our bodies and the freedoms and safety of our bodies are absolute targets for extreme right-wing forces. And so sometimes people say, oh, isn't that going a bit far? And I'd say no, it absolutely isn’t. if you look at the trends, if you look at what is happening, it really, this is not an exaggeration to say that reproductive rights women's reproductive rights are a primary battle ground in relation to women's freedom still in 2019.

 Also those reproductive rights are the first targets for the forces of misogyny and also of homo and transphobia and so on. They are the first target for all of those political forces that are, are massing, even as you and I speak here on the podcast. They are variously knocked back here and there, but that continued to flourish. 

There are victories, there are wins. They had a big win in the Kenyan high court the other day in relation to abortion, but there are also the huge ongoing difficulties that we know of.

In relation to the UK. I mean, it's really very interesting. I mean, there is an argument which would say were it not for the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain which did not extend to the north of Ireland, if that act had not been passed women in Ireland would have been in a very much more difficult situation, because what effectively happened for women in Ireland after the passage of the 1967 Act was that women in Ireland who had the resources that enabled them to travel to Britain for abortion were actually able to do so, not without difficulty, not without distress, not without suffering and completely unnecessary humiliation, but there was some kind of doorway that was opened up to women here in Ireland in 1967, which grew in the 1970s and the 1980s and 1990’s in particular. 

The numbers began to increase as news of the abortion pill became widespread basically just in, in the mid two thousands, but if not for the 67 Act we would have been in an even worse situation here in Ireland.

 But it also meant that's successive Irish governments could say, oh, well, we don't have abortion in Ireland, we didn't collect statistics because technically legally abortion was completely prohibited. Even before 1983, it was completely prohibited. But every year in the eighties and the nineties, we had six, 7,000 women travelling over to Britain.

So we didn't have abortion in Ireland, but we did have Irish abortion if you see what I mean, if I can make that distinction, it's a really very interesting relationship, I don't need to spell it out to anybody, relationships between Ireland and Britain are always complex. 

In some cases, obviously they can be very productive and healthy relationships, and there is no doubt that the fact that women could travel from Ireland to Britain was a great solace while at the same time being a great source of distress for women in this country. 

We're also facing a situation now where I hesitate to mention it, but with the looming Brexit, that situation to likely to become even more complicated, It really would do. I can go into the detail later, but basically we have now since the 1st of January, technically our law stipulates that abortion is available effectively on request up to the end of the first trimester, basically up to the end of the first 12 weeks of pregnancy thereafter, it's available only when there is a serious risk to the health of the woman and in cases of fatal foetal anomaly.

But that means that a number of women, perhaps quite a substantial number of women are continuing to have to travel to the UK. If, for example, they're in the 13th week of pregnancy, they don't have a particular health problem. They'll have to go to the UK. 

That traffic, if you like, which is a one-way journey is going to continue at least for the next few years until our law is due for review in now two and a half years’ time. And I hope that we will be able to expand it, but I wouldn't really be holding my breath so that we're still going to need to have that possibility of accessing abortion in Britain after the 12th week and perhaps later in pregnancy for women with foetal anomalies that are not fatal, but which are nonetheless very serious.

So, you know, there are a lot of uncertainties there for us at the present time. but we certainly do not see that pathway as being closed down because of our legislation. Although I think the numbers have already shown a drop since January, the numbers traveling. 

Heather: I was going to just briefly ask you what was so significant about the 1983? 

Ailbhe: Yes. Well in 1983, we had a referendum because we have a written constitution, I know there is a constitution in Britain, but it's not written down, and many people wish it were at the moment. We have a written constitution.  At that time in 1981, 82, 83, a small lobby of anti-abortion activists, very largely I think inspired and I might say encouraged and promoted by anti-abortion lobby in the US, felt that it would be a very good idea if our already very prohibitive abortion law was safeguarded or backed up.

The term used was ‘copper fastened’ by the integration into our constitution of a ban on abortion so let's inscribe that in the constitution. So it's quite unusual for constitutions to inscribe very negative clauses. Constitutions tend, on the whole, to be aspirational and to seek to achieve certain ideals.

But this specific clause was viewed as prohibiting, excluding, banning and therefore being completely negative as regards women's freedoms. And unfortunately that clause, which was called the Eighth Amendment because it was the eighth amendment to our constitution since 1930s and it was only the eighth amendment that had ever been made.

It banned abortion by saying that effectively the life of the unborn as it was called in the clause and the life of the mother, which was the term used in the clause were effectively equal. So that you really couldn't carry out an abortion because this would be to impact the right to life of the unborn.

And that de facto gave a higher status to the life of the unborn than the life of the mother. I prefer to use the terms foetus and woman, but I'm quoting the constitution now. 

And you know that we already had an Act, which was actually passed by the British in 1861, it's the very famous Offenses Against The Person Act, which of course obtained and included the British colonies including India and which regulated sexuality as well as reproduction. The 1861 Act prohibited abortion for any reason whatsoever and made it a criminal offense punishable by life imprisonment, with penal servitude. So we already have that act in force in Ireland minus the penal servitude. I am grateful to say that that had gone at that stage, but we already had incredibly draconian legislation.

You couldn't get an abortion in Ireland anyway. And then this Copper Fastening exercise took place. And in the early 1980s, Ireland was emerging from decades and decades of poverty of economic difficulty. And we were still very much under the thumb of particularly authoritarian version of Catholicism that we had in Ireland.

And that referendum was passed by a majority of 66%, just over 66%. Which meant actually that, you know, over two thirds of the people were in favour of it, but we also need to tell ourselves a little bit more positively than even back in 1983, a third of the population were against it and following that, then there was a very long and very, very difficult time consuming for those of us who approved pro-choice and feminist, a whole series of referendums followed. We had a referendum, which was actually three referendums again in 1992. Which was known as the X case referendum where a 14-year-old to had been raped was refused, her parents were refused permission to bring her to Britain for an abortion because this would be against the law. That went to the Supreme court and the Supreme court ruled that Ms. X could have an abortion because she was suicidal and that suicide constituted a threat to her life. That was a very important ruling, if you like, it gave it a tiny little breach in the constitution or ban, but no government actually legislated on the Supreme court ruling.

So even in 1992, basically, we still have the 1861 Act. And we had another referendum in 2002 asking us to rule out threatened suicide as grounds for abortion. We'd been asked that in 92, we said, no, we don't want to rule it out, we were asked to come back to that same question in 2002, the turnout was very low. People were fed up with this, bashing us about from court to court. and the people again said, no, we don't want to rule out suicide. So at that stage we had had something like five referendums and it was a very, very, very difficult situation.

 Actually in 92, what was particularly interesting and also disgraceful, was that we were asked if we thought as a people, that women should have access to information about abortion. And we were asked you if we thought that women should have the right to travel to other jurisdictions. And yet there we were as a fine upstanding member of the democratic nations of the world, seeking a seat on the UN security council and I don't know what not and voting on our human rights record and having the absolute impertinence and insolence of putting to the people questions, which were actually about our fundamental democratic rights to information and to travel, which have never been an issue. We have never been prohibited from traveling. Ireland, apart from the Catholic church has never been a dictatorship.

So, you know, it is really a very, very interesting history in terms of human rights, in terms of how governments can avoid and evade and seek to evade really important issues which have to do with women's health, women's wellbeing, women's fundamental rights and effectively get away with this for a very long time.

Heather: It astonishes me actually; this is a perfect example. That in a liberal democracy, everyone is entitled to human rights, but somehow it becomes justified that women's human rights are curtailed and those two things can live together seemingly without contradiction in people's minds. It's astonishing isn't it? 

Ailbhe: It is astonishing, but the contradictions were there in women's lives because we were de facto subservient to the rights because when a doctor, when a medical practitioner came to have a very difficult situation, for example, where it was a matter of saving either the mother or the baby during the pregnancy, the foetus or the woman, you know, the European Court of Human Rights said what you've done is create a situation which produces the chilling factor for doctors. And the chilling factor is that the doctor stands there and said, well, if I go this way or if I go that way I'm at least potentially in contravention of our constitution.

So if I save the life of the foetus it means I'm not saving life for the woman. If I saved the life of the woman, I am actually going to contravene our constitution.

So that very often action wasn't taken. And it was precisely that very point, which we as campaigners, I've been involved since before 1983, we had forecasts all along that these cases would come up and they did come up along the way, but they came up particularly with particular salience in 2012, when a young woman, as she was an Indian woman who had come to work in Ireland with her husband, they lived in the west of Ireland in Galway, and she was pregnant with her first child, a wanted pregnancy and she started to miscarry at the 14th week. She presented at the hospital and between the jigs and the reels, she was told that she was definitely miscarrying. So she and her husband requested a termination of the pregnancy because it was an inevitable miscarriage. And she was told no, that wouldn't be possible because they could still detect a foetal heartbeat. And within the following eight or nine days that young woman, Savita Halappanavar (née Savita Andanappa Yalagi) was her name died. She died of sepsis as a result of continuing to miscarry, and that miscarriage not having been terminated she developed sepsis. 

So I mean, this caused an absolute outrage in Ireland. People were scandalised that this would happen in 2012. And I think that the was a very real sense that enough is enough. We've had this going on now for 35 years. So we have to put a stop to this hypocrisy, that there isn't abortion in Ireland and quite clearly, you know, there were thousands of women going for abortions in Britain every year. And secondly that women's lives are saved because patently this woman's life was not being saved. This woman lost her life because of the eighth amendment in the constitution. 

So, you know it was a terrible, terrible tragedy, which actually brought things to a head and which came at about the same time as that ruling I mentioned from European Court of Human Rights, which shook its finger at Ireland and said,. You have to clarify when abortion is legal and when it is not. So we decided at that point in 2012, or just in 2013, that we would take the initiative as, you know, pro-choice people. And that we would start a campaign for repeal of the eighth amendment, which was exactly what we did. And we won, which is the important point. 

Heather: That’s fantastic. What I'm thinking, as you're speaking, I'm wondering how this has affected you personally, because as I understand it effectively, you've taken a position which throughout this very long period, started off with your voice, being at odds with the majority voice and you had allies and you have people who supported you and to you supported, but it seems to me that that is a very brave but lonely position to have been in. And you also, then, as I understand it predicted the eventual consequences of this, so you've stuck with something and were demonstrated to be right. So you now have the society in which you live understanding where you were coming from then, although I imagine that they originally there must've been great hostility to you. 

Ailbhe: Well, you know, I often say when I'm giving a talk or something, and that question comes up by saying, you know you see before you a broken woman, but that's not actually true. I would absolutely say that there was never any moment when I was alone you know, that just simply wasn't the case because women have fought tooth and nail in this country for the right to abortion and for the removal of that eighth amendment and have fought really very, very, very hard. 

I mean, I think perhaps along with a few others, there weren’t that many of us who were able or in a position to kind of stay the course, I suppose, and that's to do with age and all kinds of things like that.

It has certainly been a very interesting time. My own experience has been. I mean, I came out as lesbian around about 1990, and that was also very, very difficult because I mean, we did have a great victory with our marriage equality referendum in 2015, but I would also say that the recognition and if you like the rightings of the wrongs against LGBTQI people has taken a very, very long time in Ireland as well as it has indeed elsewhere. But, you know, I used to say to myself, which is the worst, is it worse to be lesbian or is it worse to be pro-choice and you know, in the overall picture, it's really bad to be both. Let me tell you that.  It's really bad to be both or was for a very long time, but actually I think being known as a very strongly pro-choice and advocating women's right to abortion, constantly pointing out that this was not just a human right. That it was a human right for a reason that it's a human right because it is actually about women's health and it is actually about women's wellbeing. And that means that it's about the health and wellbeing and decency and rightness of women and their families and their communities. This is not just about an individual right, this is about a whole social nexus which is incredibly important and that denying access to abortion for women is actually damaging to the individual, damaging to the point of being fatal in some tragic cases. But it's also damaging on a much wider on a social scale.

I mean, to be known as that kind of advocate was really to be a pariah in a polite society. I mean, I was an academic, I was head of a centre that set up women's studies, but I mean, I was certainly known, and I was not alone, but I was definitely known as that, you know, bad words, radical feminist, radical lesbian feminist and you did not get brownie points for that in Ireland. Whereas now over the past year, there has been, makes me laugh, because people, they don't exactly fall over themselves to say you were right but they have had to be really polite. They have had to integrate me into institutions and so on that I've no particular need our ambition to be in. But there has now, I think for all of those of us who fought for so long, there is at long last a kind of modicum of respect. I don't know how deep that goes, because as I said at the beginning of our conversation, I do think that women's bodies and I'm thinking much more broadly. I'm thinking also of our safety or security in terms of violence against us in all kinds of ways, our economic wellbeing, which is actually also about our material bodies and our health and so on, we are still major targets and we are major targets of right wing misogynistic forces. 

So I would say that patriarchy may have been to some extent silenced in some places, but as it is always ready to rise up again and attack in exactly the same ways, because what my experience has taught me that really they attack in the same way all the time.

So they don't see some kind of mood to change their tactics, but it was very isolating. And personally, and again, I'm sure I speak for thousands and millions of women around the world. And I say that when you take on these battles, I don't think you know at the start, well, I certainly didn't, I don't think we do. You don't know what personal price you're going to have to pay personally, but there is always a price. In fact, there are many prices and many costs, and they're generally about being side-lined, silenced or attempts made to silence you. They are about non-recognition, dismissal, contempt. The kinds of insults and humiliations that you can experience. 

When and if you do have a victory and we do have victories in our feminists lives.

There is a kind of rehabilitation that can take place, but it's not stable. It can be knocked sideways by some political, another political party, another framework, heaving into view, which is more misogynist and more patriarchal than the preceding one.

It is a risky business, but at the same time, it is I think, much more dangerous not to take action, not to speak up, not to get out there because unless we do those things and do so collectively, and the more of us there are the better, we know that, the stronger we are.  Unless we do that, quite simply the lives of girls and women are at risk.

I was actually a very, very big conference in Vancouver last week. The women deliver conference, which has eight and a half thousand girls and women from all over the world. Absolutely phenomenal. And you know, in panel after panel, after panel, women's reproductive rights were coming up as under threat, at risk unstable, not guaranteed, difficult, no services, disregard, bad services, you know, just every single place, you know, and that was before going to the panels on violence that was before going to the panels on women's poverty that was before going to the panels on sexuality. 

So it's just, it seems to me that the more we can, the more often we can get thousands of women together to say, we all have to stand up all together now and say, we will not stand for this. We will not take this anymore. 

And that was really what we did in Ireland. Back in 2012, 2013, we took hold of the debate, if you like the discourse, we said, we're putting it onto the agenda. Again, we are not waiting for some government to tell us what's going to happen. We're going to tell you what we want to see happening.

And taking that initiative was a very, it was a very wise thing to do, admittedly it was after an appalling tragedy.

Heather: What I would have liked to have strayed into, but perhaps it's too much for the one podcast, was the relationship between control over one's reproductive rights and sexual autonomy too. And obviously those things are deeply connected to each other.

Ailbhe:  Absolutely. 

Heather: So if you just have a minute to respond to that, maybe, and then we'll draw it to a close.

Ailbhe: I always felt and I've had this experience politically over the past four or five more years here in Ireland. That's when we're talking about our sexual freedoms and autonomy, and when we're talking about our reproductive freedoms and autonomy, that the issues come up in different kinds of frames that fundamentally, they are obviously about the same nature of prejudgment, the same nature, the same type, the same kind of human rights. And that's born out by the fact that whether we're talking about the rights of lesbians and gays, or whether we're talking about the right to abortion for everyone who needs an abortion, whenever we're talking about these rights and these freedoms, they are opposed by exactly the same opposition. Exactly the same enemy. Exactly the same source of the hostility and the antagonism. In both cases, the opponents are seeking to reduce us to effectively to our biology and to say you are simply your biology so that women are vessels. One of our banners used to be always on our marches - Women are not vessels - We are not just our bodies. We are not just our biology and that we have to be seen in the round, so that those efforts to kind of tell us and dictate to us what we can and can't do with our bodies are actually about keeping us in that subordinate, inferior oppressed positions.

So, you know, wherever you look, you actually have that same opposition, that same patriarchal force descending on you or being imposed on you. So I've always felt that fighting, if you like those two battles has always been about fighting the same enemy and I've never felt any kind of discomfort in that because they are at a very deep level connected.

However, when you're out there fighting for, as we were in Ireland in our referendum in 2015, if you're fighting for the rights of lesbians or gay people specifically to marry, and then you're fighting in 2018 for the right of women and anyone who needs an abortion to have that freedom to have an abortion. The issues are framed somewhat differently. And you have an address to your electorate that's somewhat different.

 In the case of marriage, what lesbians and gays were saying was, look, we effectively want the same rights as you do. We want the same rights as heterosexual people have and that fundamentally is a right to have as a partner, whoever we choose just as you can as heterosexual people. So it was framed in Ireland pretty much as being about love and being a sort of chance of happiness. There is a cynic in me that says, well, yes, until divorce happens, but, fundamentally this is set up as something positive, you know, weddings and marriages, feasting and celebration and presents and all those sorts of things people associate that with the degree of happiness. 

That's not the case with the abortion. There is no way that you can set this up as a happy moment. It is a moment, an event, a process, a procedure, which generally speaking for the majority of women brings a sense of relief. Great relief in many cases.

But that is not straightforward. That relief can be accompanied by a sense of loss and a sense of grief so it’s not the same, those decisions and those processes and those moments they're of a different order, a different tenor, a different kind of meaning in a person's life.

I think that that people can, when they're young and aspire, maybe to marry and have a family and so on, nobody aspires to have an abortion. An abortion is something you have when actually, ironically, you don't have a choice. When there isn't a choice, but that is the wisest and most sensible and basically the only thing for you to do in your life, because if you don't, you're not going to be able to cope for whatever reason.

And the reasons as we know are as individual, as the women who have the abortion. So they are very different and I think you also have to pay attention to that and respect that and understand it. 

 So when we told stories in the marriage equality referendum about our couple, not me personally, but when people would tell stories about their family lives, lesbians and gay men and so on that, that was one thing. And it was just about, okay, I think. but when women have to tell stories about their abortions, which they did incredibly bravely, that's the real bravery, standing up and talking about that experience you've been through, which may be cathartic because you're breaking the silence, but it's still a really, really difficult thing to do. That's a very different matter altogether. That's talking about something which is very personal and very private in a society and a culture, which doesn't talk about these things. And by and large, we don't talk that much about our personal health, whether that's in the UK or whether it's in Ireland or wherever it is.

And these are things that we don't do all of that easily. So the campaigns you run are very different. And I really was very closely involved with both campaigns. And I can tell you that people constantly say to us in the repeal campaign, you must have learned a lot about marriage equality.

Yes, we did, a huge amount, including what not to do, what would not be appropriate and what is very different in those two campaigns. So the same enemy, but the issues have different meanings in people's lives. And you have to respect that.  

Heather: It's been absolutely great talking to you. I think we should draw it to a close.

Ailbhe: Good to talk to you too. Thank you very much.