Medieval explanation on women’s rights over their own bodies

Suzanne Harrington talks all about explaining the 8th amendment to her daughter.

Driving along the N25 towards the Rosslare ferry in Co Wexford, we pass a slightly homemade looking billboard. 250,000 lives saved by the 8th, it says.

Daughter asks what this means. The 8th of what, she wonders. I explain. Back when I was your age, I tell her, there was a referendum — She knows what this means, having witnessed Britain hit itself over the head with Brexit — which wrote into the Irish constitution the right to life of embryos.

She looks a bit blank. She has not grown up in Ireland. So what it is, I explain, is that Irish law says that when a sperm and an egg fuse inside a woman’s body, it immediately has the same legal rights as the woman whose body it’s inside. It has the same legal status as you or I.

She bursts out laughing, because she thinks I’m joking. So you and me, she says, you and me sitting here in this car, we are legally the same as a zygote. (She’s doing GCSE biology and has all the lingo). I nod. That’s mental, she says. That’s properly mental.

So what about the 250,000 lives, she asks. I tell her I’m guessing it’s probably a hypothetical figure, based on calculations were Ireland to have the same reproductive autonomy laws as the UK since the referendum. She looks startled. You mean Ireland doesn’t? So what do Irish women do if they get pregnant and don’t want to be?

They get a Ryanair flight to England, I tell her. Or the boat. She still doesn’t get it. Why can’t they just have it done in Ireland? I tell her it’s because it’s illegal. Since they made embryos the same as women? No, I reply. Before then. But that was so long ago, she says, making me feel old. Haven’t things changed?

For gay people yes, I say, but not for women. She shakes her head. How can that be right? Why should anyone tell a woman what to do with her own body? And here I let out a sigh that lifts the car off the road. Oh love, I say to her. You have no idea.

But she’s fired up now. So who says women must stay pregnant even if they don’t want to? The church, and about a fifth of the population, I say. And governments are all too nervous to do anything, even though two thirds of Ireland want the law changed.

So you’re telling me, she says, eyes blazing a bit, that people think it’s better to let an unwanted pregnancy develop into an unwanted human? Yes, I say. Exactly. And that people who have never met you, people who are not even women, can make those decisions for you, because you are legally just a thing that babies grow in? Yes, I say again. You’ve got it.

Wow, she says. That’s medieval. And she plugs in her headphones, and stares out the window.