“Your God Cannot Be Mine:” British Reactions to the 1992 Irish X Case

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Around the world, abortion and reproductive rights are under fire.^[1] Women in the Irish Free State are all too familiar with anti-abortion political movements and prohibitions. In 1983, by way of a referendum vote, the country added a “pro-life” (Article 40.3.3) amendment to the Irish constitution. The amendment contained a “right to life” clause protecting the rights of unborn fetuses. Ireland upheld this rigid national abortion ban until 2018.

Neighboring Britain legalized abortion in 1968, but the British Abortion Act did not extend to Northern Ireland, whose parliament voted against adopting the legislation. Abortion was banned on the entire island of Ireland. As a result, thousands of Irish women made the journey to England or Wales by ferry or plane each year to access abortion services.^[2] For fifty years, these well-traveled paths in and out of the Irish Free State were known as “abortion trails.”^[3] Irish women relied on Britain, their former colonizer, to terminate their unwanted pregnancies – a relationship that their revolutionary forebearers could never have imagined.

For the most part, the British initially ignored the abortion trails, allowing them to operate underground.^[4] When the abortion trails started to garner attention as more and more Irish women traveled to procure abortions in Britain, the British grew conflicted. For the most part, they were sympathetic to the plight of Irish women but frustrated with Ireland’s conservative policies that required so many women to travel to Britain for abortion procedures. But in 1992, the Irish abortion network garnered international attention in a controversial legal case.

In 1992, a fourteen-year-old girl, referred to as “X,” was barred by the Irish Attorney General from procuring an abortion in Britain. X was raped by a family friend and became pregnant. When she informed her parents of the situation, they reported the rape and their intentions to the Irish police. When the family traveled to England, the Irish Attorney General sought an injunction under Article 40.3.3 of the Irish Constitution, citing the “right to life” clause in reference to the unborn fetus. The resulting case, Attorney General v. X, garnered international attention for Ireland’s rigid abortion ban.

In February 1992 as the X case unfolded, hundreds of British citizens wrote letters to key members of the Irish government: Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, President Mary Robinson, and the Irish Ambassador to London, Joseph Small. The reactions and initiative of the letters showed the passion on behalf of their writers. The abortion trails kept the two countries closely intertwined as Irish women remained reliant on Britain to access reproductive rights. While most of the letters expressed horror at the consequences of the rigid abortion ban, a few of the letters praised the “pro-life” amendment. The language in the British citizens’ letters demonstrated the persistence of colonial tensions in Irish-British relations, embodied in disdain for independent Ireland’s abortion politics that originated in anti-British nation-building.

Before the Irish Free State’s independence in 1922, Britain ruled Ireland for hundreds of years, employing harmful stereotypes about the Irish to justify their rule over the island. They alleged that the Irish were backwards, barbaric, and in need of guidance.^[5] This treatment persisted during Ireland’s process of nation-building. The discrimination that Ireland experienced from the British is what led Ireland to define itself directly in opposition to its oppressors.

Irish Nationalists combated colonial rule by attacking what they saw as British immorality, arguing that British association with homosexuality, prostitution, and divorce was un-Christian.^[6] Ireland’s deeply Catholic culture and ties to the Church dictated social expectations for much of the twentieth century, contrasting with Protestantism’s place in British society. With the help of the Catholic Church, and its “special place” in the Irish Constitution, Ireland worked to portray itself as a haven of purity in contrast to the vices of Britain: social conservatism compared to immoral promiscuity.^[7] This idea of Irish culture founded on morality was a deliberate result of nation-building in the aftermath of British colonialism.^[8]

Despite posturing itself as a morally superior nation, Ireland struggled to combat secularism throughout the twentieth century. Sexual liberation was a hallmark of the modernizing world, and popular literature, newspapers, and magazines were seen as irreligious and immoral.^[9] Political and religious actors framed secular practices, such as abortion, as foreign threats to Irish society. Any mention of birth control or abortion in a novel, for example, was guaranteed to place it on the banned books list before 1980. Irish Catholic culture and the “right to life” amendment that outlawed abortion were more pieces of theocratic law in a purported civil society.

The letters sent to the Irish government during the X case frequently contained language reminiscent of these same stereotypes that Britain had employed to justify its colonization of Ireland. Even after Ireland’s independence, these stereotypes and characterizations continued. Mr. Adam of Suffolk England called the Irish abortion laws, “sanctimonious, barbaric, cruel and thoughtless,” concluding, “How you can possibly call yourself a civilised country is beyond me.”^[10] Ireland’s conservative reproductive politics were starkly contrasted with Britain’s, a distinction that was rooted in Ireland’s nation-building in opposition to British values. John Gernsey of Bellingdon, England wrote, “I once believed Ireland was a civilised country. This is clearly not so…You have demonstrated to all that the Republic is one of the most primitive and barbaric states on earth.”^[11] To British citizens, Irish conservative politics were emblematic of barbarism, despite the country’s progress and independence.

Most British citizens felt that Ireland’s social commitment to conservative morals had gone too far under the influence of the Catholic church. Ireland’s “insistence on forming the laws of the land on the basis of archaic religious principles, is symptomatic of a fundamentalist religious state,” penned Ms. Lesley M. Steel.^[12] Britain’s identity as a Protestant state stood in opposition to Ireland’s Catholicism. Helen Langley of Reading condemned Ireland entirely: “I will maintain no respect for Ireland, as your God cannot be mine.”^[13] The letters blended familiar colonial sentiments with religious critique. J. Murtagh regarded the X case decision as “monstrous” even for “a country as backward and priest-ridden as Ireland.”^[14] The British were enraged by Catholic extremism and viewed Ireland’s abortion ban as that of a misguided nation. A. Akkermans wrote a forceful critique that slammed Ireland’s place in the international community and its social expectations: “No wonder your nation is often treated as an international joke. I suggest that you try to climb out of the dark ages as soon as possible, cease acting as a satellite to the Vatican and join the rest of civilization. With best wishes for a speedy return to sanity.”^[15] British citizens blamed the Catholic church and conservative culture as sources of Ireland’s oppressive abortion politics.

Although most of the letters were in opposition to the X case, some British writers were in favor of the Irish abortion ban and sent letters of support to the government. They saw Ireland’s culture as a novelty that needed to be protected from secularization. Michael Faulker called Ireland’s Eighth amendment, “a beacon of light” in a world of selfish men.^[16] Paul Kilroy wrote a letter of similar praise: “God bless Ireland! Which still retains the vestiges of its Catholic culture despite the ravages of Liberalism and Secular-Materialism.”^[17] These British citizens represented those who felt that Ireland’s conservative culture was a noble cause and a much-needed respite from a corrupt world.

The reactions of British citizens to Irish abortion policy demonstrated the complex perceptions of Irish policy from their neighbors and former colonizers. The X case concluded after the Irish Supreme Court overturned the High Court’s ruling. The Supreme Court determined that X’s suicidal mental state posed a genuine threat to her life and allowed her to procure an abortion.^[18] The uproar around the X case led to the passage of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments in December of 1992. These additions to the Irish constitution guaranteed the right to travel for and receive abortion services information in other countries.^[19] Many were unsatisfied with this result.

A letter from Mary Moran described the resulting phenomenon. Moran lived in Dublin but left after the passage of the Eighth Amendment and became an atheist after her experiences in the Free State. She wrote: “I have often thought that the Irish people are lucky to be such close neighbours to Britain, in that to ‘export’ with ease their problems and yet retain a pretense that demand for contracepture [sic], divorce and abortion don’t exist, and maintain the charade of Ireland being a good Catholic country. When will the hypocrisy stop.”^[20] Ireland continued to assert a social superiority of purity and morality while its women sought reproductive freedom elsewhere. The Irish abortion network into Britain continued until 2018 when Article 40.3.3 was repealed by way of referendum. Ireland molded its culture in opposition to Britain, making Irish women’s reproductive reliance on Britain a consequence of colonization. Addressing British reactions to the X Case allows insight into how the historical relationship of a colony and colonizer persists throughout independence, nation-building, and sovereignty.

Notes

1. “X case: Statement from Taoiseach,” Helen Langley of Reading England to Irish President Mary Robinson, National Archives of Ireland, 19 February 1992, 2023/146/341. ↑
2. Cara Delay, “Abortion in Ireland: The More Things Change…” Nursing Clio (2015). ↑
3. Clara Fischer, “Abortion and Reproduction in Ireland: Shame, Nation-Building and the Affective Politics of Place,” Feminist Review 122, no. 122 (2019): 32–48, 40. ↑
4. Ruth Fletcher, “Contesting the Cruel Treatment of Abortion-Seeking Women,” Reproductive Health Matters 22, no. 44 (2014): 10–21, 12. ↑
5. Clement Loscher, The X Case, Human Life International-Cork, 1992, National Library of Ireland, A36621 ↑
6. Averill Earls, “Unnatural Offenses of English Import: The Political Association of Englishness and Same-Sex Desire in Nineteenth-Century Irish Nationalist Media,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 28, no. 3 (2019): 396-424, 397; also see Aleardo Zanghellini, The Sexual Constitution of Political Authority: The “Trials” of Same-Sex Desire (New York: Routledge, 2015). ↑
7. Fischer, “Abortion and Reproduction in Ireland,” 38; Lynsey Black, “Gendering Postcolonial Penality: The Religious Detention of Women in Ireland,” Theoretical Criminology 29, no. 2 (2025): 161-178, 164. ↑
8. Fischer, “Abortion and Reproduction in Ireland,” 32 ↑
9. Delay, “Wrong for Womankind and the Nation,” 315. ↑
10. “Freedom of Movement: Abortion Issue,” Neil M. Adam of Suffolk, England to the Irish Ambassador, National Archives of Ireland, 19 February 1992, 2021/55/58. ↑
11. “Freedom of Movement: Abortion Issue,” John Gernsey of Bellingdon, England, National Archives of Ireland, 16 February 1992, 2021/55/58. ↑
12. “Freedom of Movement: Abortion Issue,” Ms. Lesley M. Steel, National Archives of Ireland, 16 February 1992, 2021/55/58. ↑
13. “X case: Statement from Taoiseach,” Helen Langley of Reading England to Irish President Mary Robinson. ↑
14. “Freedom of Movement: Abortion Issue,” J. Murtagh of London, England, National Archives of Ireland, 19 February 1992, 2021/55/58. ↑
15. “Freedom of Movement: Abortion Issue,” A. Akkermans of Leeds, England to the Irish Ambassador, National Archives of Ireland, 19 February 1992, 2021/55/58. ↑
16. “Freedom of Movement: Abortion Issue,” Michael Faulkner of Surrey, England, National Archives of Ireland, 18 February 1992, 2021/55/58. ↑
17. “Freedom of Movement: Abortion Issue,” Paul Kilroy of Leeds, England to the Irish Ambassador, National Archives of Ireland, 18 February 1992, 2021/55/58. ↑
18. Fischer, “Abortion and Reproduction in Ireland,” 34. ↑
19. Fischer, “Abortion and Reproduction in Ireland,” 39. ↑
20. “X Case: Statement from Taoiseach,” Mary Moran of London, England to Irish President Mary Robinson, National Archives of Ireland, 20 February 1992, 2023/146/341. ↑

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Featured image courtesy Anete Lusina.