You told your storey to [us]. You trusted us to tell it to others via art installations, written text and audio recording. You went on local, regional, national and international media to share your stories. You did so selflessly so that others won't have to tell similar stories. (Everyday stories, 2019). This quotation is from the Facebook page ‘Everyday Stories,’ addressing the multitude of women who had suffered due to the Eighth Amendment. Imposed in 1983, The Eighth Amendment to the constitution of Ireland acknowledged a “right to life of ‘the unborn,’” stripping the pregnant woman of her right to choose. In a desperate attempt to repeal the eighth amendment, saving thousands of women who were otherwise imprisoned in an unwanted pregnancy, activists encouraged an outpouring of personal stories of how the criminalisation of abortion had impacted individual women, some anonymous, others not. While the success of this movement was undeniable, I would like to discuss whether the use of storytelling, evoking traumatic memories and forcing a painfully public vulnerability from thousands of women, is a justifiable subordination of female bodies and experiences. Moreover, I aim to challenge whether the trauma of travel provoked by the eighth amendment is indeed a memory or if women in Ireland are still oppressed by current restrictions to the law that the repeal failed to remedy. Despite claims that the Eighth Amendment was initiated to protect and value life, I would argue that it was a weapon to control and oppress women, corroborated by Meehan who declared at the vigil for Savita in Granard Square, “I don’t believe that we live in a Catholic country, I think we live in a barbaric dysfunctional state and we have to change now.” Amy Walsh of Terminations for Medical Reasons solidified this argument in 2018 during Amnesty’s ‘It’s Time to Talk’ campaign when she bravely spoke about her own experience of having to travel to Liverpool in order to terminate a pregnancy due to medical complications. Walsh explained that her termination was not a matter of choice, saying that: We desperately wanted our daughter, but the doctors explained to us that there was no possibility she would survive…there’s no way to express the agony that this caused us. We were also told that if we wished to stay in the Irish hospital system and under its care, I would have to stay pregnant until our daughter died naturally. If her heart was still beating when I went into labour then the trauma of labour would cause her death. And even if it didn’t she would not be able to beath outside the womb as her lungs w ere so underdeveloped. The inhumanity of being forced to carry a child that had no chance of survival until the end of a full pregnancy reverberated through Walsh’s words “there’s no way to express the agony,” elucidating the sheer extent of the suffering that she was forced to face. A suffering that bore no reward, but rather exhibited a clear disregard of human life for both the foetus and the mother, with Walsh explaining that not only would her daughter be born into this world only to suffer and then die, but also the pregnancy became a risk to her own health as her blood pressure began to rise significantly and she showed signs of early pre-eclampsia, a condition known to be life threatening. In order to protect her own mental and physical health, Walsh was forced to give birth to her stillborn child, Rose Sophia in a hospital in Liverpool. Although the Oireachtas argued that the criminalisation of abortion was to apply human rights to the unborn child, Walsh, like many women in Ireland, was robbed “of the right to grieve,” by not being able to terminate her pregnancy in Ireland. Since her daughter’s. body was too fragile to survive the journey home intact, “none of [her] family got to meet her and” as Walsh explained “this made the whole experience and her loss so much worse.” It seems impossible to comprehend how the eighth amendment could be enforced to humanise the foetus if it prevented family’s from grieving the death of their child. the inhumanity of forcing women and girls in Ireland to travel out of the country in order to access abortion services, a symptom of the right of the unborn law that oppressed the women of Ireland into a contractual motherhood; an assumption that once a woman became impregnated, she “was changed from a human being into a relationship, that of motherhood” (Enright, ----) was a brutal and patriarchal denial of womens’ rights and wellbeing. The repeal the eighth movement incorporated the publication of womens’ personal stories in an attempt to encourage the rest of Ireland to vote for a repeal by exposing them to an empathy evoking insight to the trauma that the amendment has, and would continue, to cause. The Facebook page In Her Shoes, or @InHerIrishShoes on Twitter, was created as a platform for women to anonymously share their stories, their memories and their trauma. The experience, as the Facebook page proves, extends far beyond the trauma of abortion itself. Many women could not afford more than the flights for just one person, forcing them to travel alone to a foreign place for an invasive, painful and emotionally testing surgery: My mum couldn’t come with me because we couldn’t afford both our flights and I thought because I was only flying out that morning and coming back that night, I’d be fine but I was wrong.” (In Her Shoes, 2018) Written by a 20-year-old girl, the post goes on to explain the fear, pain and desperation that she felt alone in a foreign country: I was terrified. Alone except for strangers in a country I didn’t know, worried I wouldn’t be able for the flight home and having nowhere to stay if that was the case…so before they could tell me whether I could or couldn’t travel, I got myself dressed, called a taxi and went back to the airport. While it is impossible to even debate whether the physical or mental implications of travel for abortion access were more damaging towards women, in all of this individual woman’s pain and trauma, waiting in an airport in agony for five hours and flying home all while in agony from an abortion, it is important to note that her, the worst part of the experience was the “feeling of being shamed, the travelling across seas, the being in another country and the travelling back after such a procedure,” experiences which she describes as “more traumatic than the actual abortion.” For many women, having a pregnancy terminated renders them to their most vulnerable state, in this time, Irish women were also ostracised both physically and emotional from their country, their community, and for some, their families. Beyond this, many Irish women risked sever medical complications by lying to medical professionals and leaving treatment facilities early in order to be able to make it home, consolidated by a second anonymous woman who wrote: I was told to go to the toilet and get dressed. There was a lot of blood and I felt weak but when the nurse asked, I told her there was barely any blood and I couldn’t afford to miss it.” (In Her Shoes, 2018) The Eighth Amendment not only left thousands of women with agony and trauma, but it massively risked their physical wellbeing. It is thus that the moment to repeal the Eighth Amendment was vital. In a poll asking voters what encouraged them to agree that the Eighth Amendment should be repealed, 44% of those who voted for the eighth amendment to be repealed claimed to be massively influenced by the empathy evoked from listening to what women had suffered as a consequence of the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution. Prior to the uproar of women sharing their own experiences, many people in Ireland were unaware of what women had to suffer in order to access a safe and legal abortion. I would argue that this is because, due to the criminalisation of abortion, women were to afraid to admit that they had received one, and as a result nobody knew about the impact of the amendment. … It is, however, plausible, that story telling surrounding the criminalisation of abortion had this impact because some people were only able to be empathetic having heard real life experiences and emotion, rather than just reading statistics. However, the activism surrounding the repeal of the eighth amendment did not appear to differ in attitude towards female bodies. Although the movement aimed to liberate and protect women from the cruelty of the criminalisation of abortion, the movement relied largely on the sacrifice and brutal public vulnerability of many women in Ireland. As Barr explains, “If mother Ireland was a foundational myth of Irish nationalism, and the Irish constitution states that ‘by her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved,’ then the woman who shared their trauma stories in relation to the eighth Amendment were once again being asked to subordinate their bodies to the common (national) good,” (2019). Thus, to be a woman in Ireland is to be less human; a prop or tool for reproductive services, and even in feminist activism, it is to be a body to serve the nation and not the self, insisting on female “corporeal openness to wounding and suffering,” (Petherbridge, 2018). This movement pressured women to become martyrs in order to prevent others from suffering in the same way that they did, making activism surrounding the repeal the eighth problematic in two vital ways. The first being women became divided into two categories: “those who had suffered enough to deserve abortion provision, and those who had not,” (Quinlan). This segregated women further, suggesting that those who had not suffered, and those who did not have a story to share, were less valuable to the state than those who’s suffering was captivating enough to help move the rest of Ireland to vote in favour of a repeal. This provoked a blatant dichotomy between women in Ireland, since although people were beginning to empathise with the suffering of women through the many studies that were published, this empathy was aimed directly at those with stories and did not extend towards all women who, irrelevant to what their bodies had suffered, were equally oppressed by the restrictions that the eighth amendment entailed. Moreover, Darling suggests that the mass publication of traumatic abortion stories maintained a “calcified distrust of what was termed ‘abortion on demand’”. This induced an unfortunate conflict between abortion in itself, a procedure that despite the horrific circumstances many women had to face, should be considered normal and safe, and the idea of the story which became a vehicle for spreading awareness for the atrocity of the eighth amendment and the trauma that it caused. This is evidenced by Cahill who wrote the headline “My abortion was not traumatic,” describing her abortion as “Decision made. Clear. Certain. No vacillation. Easy.” (2016). The idea that abortion now became intrinsically connected to stories of memory and trauma, challenging the connotations of abortion suggesting that, for all women, it is indefinitely attached to feeling of fear, guilt, shame and most importantly trauma, elevating the experience above other “female bodily experiences, such as smear tests or periods” which as Darling highlights, are not “stories” and suggests that a woman must therefore have a story. Secondly, the movement applied a certain amount of guilt to those women who did not feel comfortable sharing their own stories, relying almost wholly on the contributions of women who have suffered: Stories do things to people: they make people do things in response. The referendum was won by narrative. The telling of stories from individual women took on the power of narrative; the cumulative energy of all story telling. (Barr, 2019) This pressuring of women to come forward and speak about what their own bodies had been through to “challenge and ultimately end the constitutionally mandated control of women’s bodies,” in itself threatened to reduce women’s role as “the suffering body for society in general,” (Darling, 2021). This pushed the personal experiences and potential suffering of women beyond the private domain and into the political sphere, thus shrouding the experience in itself with a political agenda. I would argue that this dehumanises the woman just as much as the restrictions of the eighth amendment did, summarised by Miriam Needham, who wrote, “I think it’s important for us, for society, to be aware of the kind of trauma you can put someone through by putting their humanity up for a vote.” Although the activism intended to repeal the eighth amendment was vital for the wellbeing of women, it is important to acknowledge that the trauma that we speak of when referring to abortion laws extends… On the 25th May 2018, 66.4% of voters opted to repeal the eighth amendment to the constitution, forcing the Oireachtas to legislate for the regulation of termination of pregnancy. A repeal which, to 66.4% of voters, was meant to decriminalise abortion, end stigmas, shame and fear surrounding them and, most vitally, put an end to forcing women to travel to the UK in order to have a legal abortion. It was this day that justified the perpetual subordination of women’s bodies and the risk and trauma of sharing private and deeply emotional stories in order to move the public and beg for their empathy; their vote for repeal “so that others won’t have to tell similar stories.” On the 25th May 2018, the eighth amendment to the constitution was repealed and women were, henceforth, legally able to have an abortion in the Republic of Ireland. However, the trauma of past oppression is not solely a memory, as Cullen Delsol confirms in 2021, writing: We have come across at least 30 people who have been forced to travel during the pandemic. They have to show that letter to strangers, who scrutinise it, asking if their reason for travelling is really essential. There have been women turned away who have had to reschedule and turn back. The fear and shame and stigma and the grief and the loss is just magnified ten times over by going through those kinds of horrible circumstances, on their way to lose their baby. The activism involved in repealing the eighth amendment to the constitution in Ireland was an incredible act of bravery from many women and young girls in Ireland however, although the law has changed, many of the circumstances have remained. Under new restrictions, women are forced to surpass a mandatory waiting period between seeing their general practitioner and gaining access to an abortion. In addition to this, women were only able to have an abortion ten weeks after consummation and thus for many, by the time they are aware of their pregnancy, or able to make a decision, it is too late to access a legal abortion in Ireland. If this period is passed and a woman wishes to terminate her pregnancy due to serious foetal anomaly’s, she can only do so if two doctors agree that the foetus will die before or within 28 days of birth. As a result of this, there are only three diagnoses that do, generally, ensure access to an abortion: Edwards Syndrome, Patau Syndrome and anencephaly. Any condition beyond this would be unlikely to warrant a legal abortion in Ireland since doctors still feared facing time in prison for providing an abortion in a case that the state does not agree with. Furthermore, doctors had the right to refuse care due to “conscious objection.” This not only maintains the feeling of shame and stigmatism associated with abortion but creates an inequality of essential care based on the location. While many women all across Ireland are pushed from one doctor to another, or even one hospital to another, meaning many pass the legal window for an abortion, women in smaller places do not have the same facilities and thus may have no way of accessing an abortion, made worse by the fact that abortion is still a criminal offense meaning that friends, family and doctors can still face up to fourteen years in prison for helping a woman access abortion services beyond the restrictions put in place. Finally, the act in itself endangers the wellbeing of women in itself by neglecting to provide a definition for “serious harm” thus entailing many women to be denied abortion services for, as Clarke puts it, not being “suicidal enough.” This is further emphasised by Lynn Enright who wrote in The Irish Times, “The current law is so restrictive that conditions that would have been considered before [2018] are now considered not fatal enough,” (2021). The absurdity of the idea of being not suicidal or not fatal enough shows a blatant disregard towards the health and wellbeing of women and their bodies, yet again emphasising that before, during and after the repeal, women’s have been property of the state, repetitively subordinated by abortion laws. Beyond this, the perpetual criminalisation of abortion in Ireland, as Dr Caitriona Henchion, Medical Director of the Irish Family Planning Association , explains, undermines the relationship between a doctor and a patient meaning that the responsibility to access an abortion becomes entirely the responsibility of the woman, inducing even further feelings of anxiety and confusion in a time that is already enshrouded by an intense vulnerability. At the vigil for Sativa in Granard Square, Paula Meehan declared: “I don’t believe that we live in a Catholic country, I think we live in a barbaric dysfunctional state and we have to change now.” The urgency that Meehan referred to still remains. Although publicising stories of memories and trauma from many women in Ireland played an integral role in repealing the eighth amendment, it continued a perpetual subordination of women, reducing the female body to an emblem for political injustice, a story of trauma. This relentless injustice remains evident as still, women are facing travelling across seas in order to access abortion. Sharing stories of trauma was a brave and selfless act, however it did not normalise the procedure of abortion and tackle the greater issue of female oppression and lack of autonomy, rather it evoked pity for individual circumstances, and thus, abortion remains criminalised in the Republic of Ireland.