The Ghosts of Irish Past: The History of Women’s Obstetric and Reproductive Violence in Ireland

The stigmatisation, tabooisation and fear attached to women’s reproductive anatomy and its functions has a long history in Western mentality overall (Shorter, 1982; Laqueur, 1990; Lindquist, 2016). The 20^th century Irish history provides a long list of examples of institutional and obstetric violence on Irish women and their bodies, including cases of incarceration of young women, forced adoptions, barbaric medical procedures on birthing women, or a complete lack of autonomy over their reproductive bodies. Some argue that in the Irish case of a tight union of religious, national and medical powers resulted in a perfect storm of consequences mapped across women’s reproductive bodies in the post-independence Ireland (Delay & Sundstrom, 2020). Using historical records and archival medical research from the past three hundred years of Irish history of women’s bodies, this paper discusses how the social and historical discourses of power shape Irish women’s reproductive rights and the quality of healthcare till this day.