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Reproductive Justice in Europe: A panel discussion on International Women’s Day

08 March 2017, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm

abortion rights ireland…

Event Information

Location

347, UCL SSEES

This panel discussion, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, brings together diverse London based speakers – activists and academics from across Europe – to reflect on reproductive rights. London remains a vital site of vibrant diasporas participating in transnational activist and solidarity networks like the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign and Gals4Gals (Dziewuchy Dziewuchom).

There are great differences between the respective national contexts being discussed some of the most restrictive and punitive abortion laws in the world are to be found in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Poland. This is in contrast to countries like Serbia, Croatia and Hungary which traditionally had more progressive reproductive rights regimes. Yet a worrying rolling back of reproductive rights is visible across much of the European continent.

The election of Donald Trump in the USA, possible mobility restrictions in the UK post-Brexit, and the spectre of the far-right across Europe are cause for alarm. At the same time, progressive women and their allies are more galvanised than ever as evidenced by the scale of global Women's Marches on January 21st and the success of Czarny Protest in Poland during October 2016.

The panel aims to take stock of some of the main trends in reproductive rights in Europe paying particular attention to the roles of transnational activist and diasporic networks in London which have been instrumental in advocating for progressive reproductive rights.

Speakers include:

· Marta Kotwas, UCL SSEES/Gals4Gals (Dziewuchy Dziewuchom)

· Nevila Pahumi, UCL SSEES

· Rebecca Steinfeld, Goldsmiths

· Eszter Tarsoly UCL SSEES

· Eleanor White, Abortion Rights Campaign Ireland

We invite you to join us for the discussion which will be followed by an informal drinks reception to celebrate International Women’s Day.

The event is convened by Rory Archer (Mellon postdoctoral fellow, UCL SSEES) and Cara Spelman (Gender, Society and Representation MA Student, UCL CMII) in cooperation with the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign.

About the speakers:

Marta Kotwas is a pro-choice activist involved with a Polish grassroots movement Dziewuchy Dziewuchom London (Gals4Gals) and a postgraduate student at UCL SSEES. She was previously affiliated with Women's Studies Centre at the University of Lodz, Poland. Her current research focuses on modern Polish Catholicism and it's influence on politics and representations patriotism as well as the rise of right-wing populism. She is also interested in the social construction of femininity and masculinity in Central and Eastern Europe.

Nevila Pahumi is a historian of southeastern Europe who works on gender, religion, and nationalism. She is currently Alexander Nash Fellow in Albanian Studies at UCL SSEES.

Rebecca Steinfeld is a political scientist whose research focuses on gender and reproductive rights. She received her DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford on fertility policies in Israel. A Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre of the Body at Goldsmiths, Rebecca has written and broadcast on a range of topics, including the politics of reproduction and the ethics of circumcision. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and The Conversation, and she has broadcast on BBC TV and radio as part of her work as a BBC New Generation Thinker. Together with her partner Charles Keidan, she is co-founder of the Campaign for Equal Civil Partnerships.

Dr Eszter Tarsoly teaches Hungarian and sociolinguistics at University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies. She also leads The Danube: Intercultural Interaction Global Citizenship summer school at UCL and co-ordinates postgraduate language programmes at SSEES. Her research explores the cross-linguistic diversity of attitudes towards language and the social, cultural, and language typological factors that influence discourses of standard language in Europe. Eszter is also interested in linguistic diversity and endangerment, language contact, and the non-trivial relationship between language and identity. Her current projects include an international seminar on the communicative processes and outcomes involved in migration, and the linguistic categorisation underlying the representation of migrants, women, and other strangers.

Eleanor White is a pro-choice activist that has been involved in Irish related pro-choice campaigning since she was a teen. When she lived in Ireland she was very active with the Abortion Rights Campaign, a cross island pro-choice group advocating for free, safe and legal abortion. Since moving to London she has helped co-found the London Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, a UK branch of the Abortion Rights Campaign. Their main aim is to highlight the lack of knowledge and understanding of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland's abortion laws within the UK. As England and in particularly London is the primary destination for Irish and Northern Irish women to travel for legal abortions they can access, our aim with LIARC is to highlight these journeys that countless women undertake each year.

Image: London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, Protest in front of the Irish Embassy, 2016 © Alastair Moore

Presentation from the Festival of Choice, October 2016 (PDF)