ABSTRACT
The previous two chapters examined the ways in which an anti-abortion commonsense was produced in the 1983 'pro-life' constitutional amendment campaign, not least through the orchestration of a 'moral panic'. A failure to recognize foetal rights was constructed as threatening to the very survival of the nation, characterized as 'pro-life', traditionalist, familial, specifically Catholic and generally Christian. Republican democracy itself, defmed in terms of popular sovereignty and the promotion of the 'common good', was judged to be at stake in the referendum. The specific configuration of traditional familial Irishness was, however, contradictory. Based on an analysis of national press coverage of the X case and its political aftermath, this chapter will consider the ways the 1992 crisis reversed the logic on which anti-abortion national commonsense had relied.
