ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Claire Hennessy’s Like Other Girls (2017) and Moïra Fowley-Doyle’s All the Bad Apples (2019), two Irish Young Adult – YA – novels that address the experiences of teenage girls who find themselves trying to access abortion in an Ireland where this was prohibited through the Eighth Amendment. While Lauren Carroll, in Hennessy’s novel, and Rachel Rys, in Fowley-Doyle’s text, experience an unwanted pregnancy at different time periods – Lauren in the mid-2010s and Rachel in the mid-1990s – their experiences are quite similar. Therefore, this chapter sets out to explore the transculturality that characterises discourses on reproductive rights in the Republic of Ireland and how these novels challenge stereotypical representations of abortion and teenage pregnancy as the adolescent girls navigate the termination of their pregnancies.
