How Irish Women's Experiences Of Travelling For Abortions Challenge Our Understanding of Citizenship, Gender and Failure

My proposed PhD topic combines qualitative research, critical discourse analysis, and feminist theory to explore the link between Irish women who travel abroad for abortions and national ideals of citizenship and gender.
Ireland's ideals of citizenship have transformed over the past three decades, particularly in relation to gender and heteronormativity, and continue to do so. By embracing theories regarding liminality in anthropology, I will be able to examine Ireland as a nation state whose concept of gender and citizenship is in flux. Recent changes to the Irish constitution have reduced the impact of patriarchal, heteronormative and religious ideals regarding gender, sexuality and heteronormativity, including public referenda allowing contraception, divorce, and same-sex marriage - the latter having taken place in 2015. These societal and cultural changes have challenged traditional gender roles and what it means to be an Irish woman. These transformations have also impacted the rhetoric around abortion in Ireland, as social change seems imminent. There is a renewed vigor among pro-choice movements in Ireland, but there is also a notable backlash to this movement, resulting in the dissemination of anti-choice rhetoric, much of which directly attacks the character of women who travel for abortions.
Due to Ireland's unique position as a State and culture undergoing a distinct transformation regarding gender and sexuality, the country provides a fascinating case study to explore how gendered citizenship is felt, enacted, and how it evolves. Critical discourse analysis will enable me to explore how recent changes have affected Ireland's rhetoric regarding patriotism and what it means to be a "good" citizen of Ireland, and what it means to be a woman currently navigating that shifting social landscape. By employing meso critical discourse analysis to examine how public discourse regarding gender, sexuality and abortion is created and perpetuated by pro- and anti-choice campaigners and the mainstream media, I will be able to examine how Irish institutions and campaigners produce and perpetuate particular ideals of womanhood. Macro critical discourse analysis will then allow me to explore how these shifting ideals of gender and sexuality affect how Irish women experience Ireland's evolving ideals of citizenship, their identity as female Irish citizens, and their attitudes towards existing laws regarding abortion. This form of macro analysis will be used to focus and analyze my qualitative interviews with Irish women who have travelled abroad for abortions.
I already have experience conducting qualitative research related to this topic, and am excited to use my PhD to expand upon my work and contribute substantial qualitative data and generative frameworks of analysis. During my M.A. in Sexuality Studies, I used my platform as a feminist journalist and public intellectual to recruit Irish women who had travelled abroad for abortions to be interviewed. My recruitment was so successful that I was ultimately unable to interview all the women who volunteered to be part of my research, but the positive response was very encouraging for future work. Using a semi-structured interview guide and thematic coding, my thesis eventually focused on my participants' experiences of guilt, motherhood, ambiguity, and space and exile.
During my interviews, many women spoke of feeling rejected both by Ireland and by individual people in their lives because of their decision to have an abortion, feeling literally exiled from their home country in order to have an abortion, and then being shamed or ostracized by people because of their decision. Many women expressed this by using the language of failure in relation to both their citizenship and womanhood.