Between 2019 and 2021, the Abortion Rights Campaign (ARC) developed and conducted an extensive research project to evaluate individuals’ experiences of Ireland’s abortion services. This event will publicly launch the results of that project, giving valuable insight into how Ireland’s abortion services are working from the patient’s perspective, and highlighting the many barriers to care that still persist.

We will have a presentation from data analyst Dr Lorraine Grimes outlining the key findings and recommendations to improve abortion service provision in Ireland. Additional speakers will highlight the barriers to care in law, medical practice, and on the ground, as well as what needs to change in the upcoming legislative review.

There will be a brief Q&A session at the end.

Irish Sign Language interpretation will be provided.

Speakers:

Lorraine Grimes is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Social Science Institute at Maynooth University on the project ‘Digital Preservation of Reproductive Health Resources: Archiving the 8th’. She has worked on projects including the World Health Organisation project ‘Reproductive Health: The Implementation of Abortion Policy in Ireland’, and has a number of forthcoming publications focusing on unmarried motherhood, maternity care and stillbirth in Britain and Ireland.

Mary Favier is a General Pracitioner in Cork. She is a founding member of Doctors for Choice Ireland and current co-chair of Global Doctors for Choice.

Mairead Enright is a Reader in Feminist Legal Studies at the University of Birmingham and a founder member of Lawyers for Choice. With Fiona de Londras she wrote Repealing the Eighth: Reforming Irish Abortion Law (2018).

Mara Clarke founded charity Abortion Support Network, which has been helping people cross European borders to access abortions since 2009. She can’t wait until the amazing groups campaigning for abortion law reform make ASN obsolete.