ABSTRACT
On 12th February 1992, a headline appeared on the front page of the liberal leftwing national newspaper The Irish Times, announcing 'State attempts to stop girl's abortion'. A fourteen-year-old pregnant rape victim, referred to as 'X', had been issued with a temporary High Court injunction, preventing her from obtaining an abortion, and from leaving the State for a period of nine months. The right to life of X's foetus, constitutionally recognized since 1983, was judged to outweigh her own rights to bodily integrity and freedom of movement. The news became the focus of extraordinary public controversy, as mass demonstrations demanding the removal of the injunction became daily events. The State's action, effectively compelling a fourteen-year-old to carry a pregnancy conceived through rape, was greeted with popular outrage. Characterizations of X and her family as respectable, middle-class, and law-abiding were particularly important in generating this public reaction. The significance of what were perceived as the exceptional circumstances of this case has had lasting effect on the abortion debate in Ireland, as journalist Aine McCarthy (2000) connnents, and indicated a rupture of previous political affiliations. As the editorial of the same newspaper declared in response to the case, Ireland appeared to have 'descended into cruelty' in a way similar to explicitly undemocratic and tyrannical states.1
