Staying in a punishing place: online narratives about pregnancy and abortion in pre-liberalisation Ireland

Restricted abortion access impinges on the human rights and health of a significant number of women globally. The reproductive justice framework, as well as recent calls for the normalisation of abortion, encourage examination of the deleterious effects of abortion restrictions. This study explores the self-generated, online narratives of women who experienced crises in pregnancy while living in a restrictive context, namely pre-2019 Ireland, and who did not travel for abortion care. Mental health and emotional experiences are a specific focus. From an archived version of posts to the In her Shoes – Women of the Eighth Facebook page made in 2018–2019 (N = 728), 96 personal narratives were sampled. Narratives that did not feature travel for abortion care (n = 25) were selected for thematic analysis, which was completed by a single researcher in 2024. Themes that emerged included waiting for intervention as a form of mental torture, fear during self-managed abortion, attempts to self-induce abortion driven by despair, and variation in the extent to which proceeding with the pregnancy was a choice. Most women who stayed in place had been constrained by circumstances in deciding to do so. These results enrich our understanding of the negative effects of restrictive contexts on women’s emotional wellbeing. They also draw attention to those who are effectively trapped in restricted contexts and overlooked when the literature narrowly focuses on outward travel from restrictive contexts for abortion care.