“A Holy Alliance: Obstacles to abortion rights in Ireland North and South”

One interesting question about debate on abortion in Ireland is why, although the law in the North is significantly more liberal than that in the South, is the policy discourse in both jurisdictions so similar – about saving women’s lives only? This chapter argues that, while in the South the Eighth amendment to the Constitution has restricted debate to the question of life-saving abortions, in the North it is a ‘holy alliance’ of evangelical Protestantism and fundamentalist Catholicism that has kept the debate so limited.