Abortion related disinformation in Ireland

von Camilla Fitzsimons: Mehr Information

Presentation (with discussion)

  • Sprache: Englisch
  • Dauer: 45min
  • in Präsenz

Um was geht´s?

Abortion services were legalised in Ireland following a referendum that voted 2:1 to repeal an archaic and dangerous constitutional ban. Since services were introduced in 2019, the WHO have outlined misinformation and conscientious objection among healthcare professionals as a major is-sue in Ireland (WHO, 2020, p.26, 40). This is alongside the ongoing dissemination of disinformation by organisations commonly known as Crisis Pregnancy Centres (CPCs) or “rogue agencies” who provide unregulated pregnancy ‘counselling’ from an explicitly anti-abortion perspective, while presenting themselves as neutral sources of information and support (IFPA, 2006).

This presentation will give an update on the early stages of research that seeks to uncover the ex-tent to which disinformation, by which I mean information that is “deliberately created or shared falsehoods intended to deceive or manipulate” (AONTAS, 2025, p. 38). In particular I outline practices including:

  1. Deliberate non-referral practices and the dissemination of abortion disinformation by non-providing medical practitioners including GPs and hospital settings.
  2. The dissemination of abortion disinformation by CPCs/Rogue Agencies including online and digital disinformation.

This research objectives are to:

  • Identify and analyse the types of abortion-related information and claims disseminated by these actors.
  • Assess the extent to which such content contains inaccurate, misleading, or scientifically unsupported claims when evaluated against established clinical and public health evidence.
  • Examine the broader implications of disinformation for informed decision-making, patient autonomy, and timely access to abortion services.

In dialogue with others, I would like to get a sense of whether similar practices are ongoing in other countries also and begin to consider how together, we might be part of the struggle against the row back of abortion rights and reproductive rights more broadly and in the context of gains by the far right who hold anti-abortion as one of their core tenets.

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Zielsetzung des Beitrags

Share experiences of deliberate attempts to interfere with people’s capacity to access abortion care and ways in which this can be combatted to hamper their influence. Build alliances with other like minded people