LARABII’s first public event, an international conference on reproductive rights and abortion politics, will take place on 18 and 19 May at the University of Iceland.
Pro-choice activists and scholars of abortion politics, based in seven different countries, will gather in Reykjavík for the two-day conference. The focus of the conference is on the recent liberalising reforms of abortion law in Ireland (2018), Iceland (2019), and Northern Ireland (2020). These developments stand in stark contrast to a backlash against reproductive rights elsewhere, as particularly evidenced this week by the leaked draft opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, which suggests the constitutional right to abortion affirmed by the 1973 Roe vs. Wade judgment may be removed as early as next month.
Members of the public are welcome to attend the conference’s public panel, which will take place on the afternoon of Wednesday 18 May on the University of Iceland’s main campus. Prominent international speakers on the panel will include:
- Ivana Bacik (Ireland): Member of the Irish parliament and leader of the Labour Party, lawyer and legal scholar, and prominent pro-choice campaigner over many decades.
- Professor David Farrell (Ireland): Professor of Politics at University College Dublin, Chair of the European Consortium for Political Research, and Principal Investigator of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly Project.
- Dr Fiona Bloomer (Northern Ireland): Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Ulster University, with an extensive publication record on abortion politics and policy reform.
More information will be published shortly, so keep an eye on the LARABII website!
