Macro- and Micro-Political Vernaculizations of Rights

How abortion is dealt with in law and policy is shaped through the multiple political and societal discourses on the issue within a particular society. Debate on abortion is constantly in flux, with progressive and regressive movements witnessed globally. This paper examines the translation of human rights norms into discourses on abortion in Northern Ireland, a region where abortion is highly restricted, with extensive contemporary public debate into potential liberalization of abortion law. This paper emanates from research examining political debates on abortion in Northern Ireland and contrasts findings with recent civil society developments, identifying competing narratives of human rights with regard to abortion at the macroand micro-political level. The paper identifies the complexities of using human rights as a lobbying tool, and questions the utility of rights-based arguments in furthering abortion law reform. The paper concludes that a legalistic rights-based approach may have limited efficacy in creating a more nuanced debate and perspective on abortion in Northern Ireland but that it has particular resonance in arguing for limited reform in extreme cases. Claire Pierson, PhD, is a research associate in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and Department of Health, Psychology and Social Care at Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, England. Fiona Bloomer, PhD, is a lecturer in social policy at the Institute for Research in Social Sciences, School of Criminology, Politics and Social Policy, at Ulster University, Jordanstown, Northern Ireland. Please address correspondence to Claire Pierson. Email: [email protected]. Competing interests: None declared. Copyright © 2017 Pierson and Bloomer. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Health and Human Rights Journal HHr HHR_final_logo_alone.indd 1 10/19/15 10:53 AM claire pierson and fiona bloomer / abortion and human rights, 173-185 174 J U N E 2 0 1 7 V O L U M E 1 9 N U M B E R 1 Health and Human Rights Journal Introduction “Culture wars” on abortion refer to the battle over the meaning of abortion and abortion legislation.1 We argue (in conjunction with authors such as Ferree and Feltham-King and MacLeod) that who says what about abortion contributes to the outcomes that we will see in law and policy.2 In particular, we are concerned with how women’s needs and interests with regard to abortion are represented in political and public civic discourse. Literature on abortion in Ireland has illustrated the largely anti-abortion rhetoric perpetuated by political elites and the conservative Christian churches.3 However, there is a gap in our understanding of the evolving plurality of abortion speak. In Ireland, north and south, the culture war over abortion is reaching a critical juncture with an almost constant media focus and public discussion on legislative restrictions and reforms. Accordingly, with legal reform on the political agenda, this is a timely period to address the framing of abortion rights in one of the legislative jurisdictions of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the potential limitations and opportunities going forward. In addition, with abortion rights being continually challenged internationally, it is imperative to consider contextually how rights-based arguments can further or limit legislative change on abortion law. Human rights offer a contested yet universal and global set of rights and freedoms, providing a framework to argue for justice and legislative reform when breached. Human rights as a legal tool are based on the premise that states intervention in their citizens’ lives must be regulated and contained through universal, global human rights principles and respect for individuals’ rights.4 Human rights can be contended to be an emancipatory tool for vulnerable people; for women, it can help to contextualize and provide legal recognition of the various injustices resulting from gender inequality. However, core global norms must be contextualized to local settings in order for them to be viewed as both relevant and legitimate, and subsequently, to become a driver of social and legal change. Processes of vernaculization and indigenization take place, firstly, to package the language of human rights in a relevant contextual language, and secondly, to define strategies of action and make ideas and arguments persuasive.5 International human rights norms have been successfully mobilized in the Northern Ireland context primarily for conflict-related abuses, and accordingly, the architecture of human rights was mainstreamed into the peace agreement. Consequently, the language and potential of rights-based arguments as a mechanism for social change or justice has a high level of resonance in this context. Understanding the historical and social understandings of rights in specific contexts is key to comprehending the “frames” that rights-based discourses take. Analyses of human rights-based abortion discourses have largely taken place in regions where abortion law is more liberal; such discourses have had less analysis in regions hostile to abortion law reform.6 A notable exception to this is analysis of religion and human rights discourse in Latin America.7 This paper is based on research conducted on political discourse on abortion in Northern Ireland. Thematic content analysis of political debate on abortion in Northern Ireland identified a growing use of human rights-based language when discussing both liberalizing and restricting abortion rights. We contrast the presentation and vernaculization of international human rights norms at the macro-political level (defined by the authors as elected political representatives and parties) with that of civil society actors (referred to here as micro-political actors). We illustrate that despite the centrality and long history of human rights-based arguments surrounding inequality and conflict in Northern Ireland, a rights-based framework to understanding and lobbying against abortion restrictions is a process which has only recently started and which is currently ongoing. The paper therefore contributes to understanding how human rights are translated at a local level (both at a macroand micro-political level) and to appreciating the complexity of articulating human rights-based discourses around abortion. The paper concludes that there are dualistic understandings and framings of rights at the macroand micro-political claire pierson and fiona bloomer / abortion and human rights, 173-185 J U N E 2 0 1 7 V O L U M E 1 9 N U M B E R 1 Health and Human Rights Journal 175 level that conflate with global discourses on abortion rights, and questions the potential of human rights to drive substantial legal change and provide a more nuanced context within which to discuss abortion. We will show that rights have high resonance in extreme cases, such as fatal fetal anomaly (FFA) and sexual crime, in the Northern Ireland case study, but are less effective in arguing for liberal abortion laws. Translating the global to the local There is extensive and ongoing debate as to whether human rights are a universal concept or a product of Western conceptions of rights and freedoms and consequently not directly translatable within all cultures and societies.8 While we do not present a critique or defense of universalism within this article, we do recognize that human rights norms are viewed to be most effective when reframed or vernaculized to local conceptions of justice.9 Through these processes of vernaculization and indigenization, ideas can be reframed dramatically and may move away from the international language of human rights to suit local conceptions.10 However, this is not to say that rights are fixed within particular locales but that local rights consciousness shifts with emerging concerns and awareness, and as such, notions of what are key rights issues may shift accordingly. Understanding processes of vernaculization and indigenization must include an understanding of both historical and contemporary culture and social structure in particular locations. Vernaculization refers to processes in the 19th century whereby national languages in Europe separated, moving away from transnational use of Latin towards a more differentiated sense of nationhood based on national language.11 In a similar way, human rights language moves from global, universal norms and is vernaculized to local, specific contexts. Indigenization relates to shifts in meaning, how ideas are framed within particular social and cultural contexts.12 One of the key approaches to translating and adopting rights norms is “framing,” which is the interpretive package surrounding an idea. A theory of social movements, it analyzes ways of packaging and presenting of ideas which creates shared beliefs and motivates collective action.13 Butler’s exploration of framing presents it as a means of controlling or defining the surrounding discourse, and consequently establishing the constraints of reality.14 The greater the resonance framing has with cultural traditions and narratives, the more appealing it is said to be. However, Ferree reasons that often for activist groups, non-resonant discourses can be more politically radical, and accordingly have more potential for long-term social change, whereas resonant frames, although more successful in the short-term, may be required to sacrifice ideals and exclude particular groups and demands.15 In our example, a non-resonant discourse would be the complete decriminalization of abortion, whereas a resonant discourse would include abortion in cases of FFA and sexual crime. Rights are translated through “intermediaries” such as national human rights commissions or community leaders. Those who translate norms are seen to be conversant in both global norms and local contexts and able to move between the two, translating up and down.16 Such institutions and people are places where global norms merge with local ideologies, and as such are where local definitions and priorities are conceptualized. There are power relations imbued into such relationships; who is seen as able or legitimate to translate global norms to local contexts is an important consideration.17 Processes of translation are not always successful; there can be active resistance to human rights claims based on a perceived loss of power or conflict with local conceptions of rights or justice. Resistance has been much more heavily documented with regard to the Global South and in particular to conflicts with Islam.18 In addition, although human rights may be successfully translated to local contexts, articulation and implementation by the state is necessary for the legal and justiciable realization of rights. The perception and articulation of rights at the macro-political level is particularly important in our example, as abortion rights are restricted and resisted through legislation. Western democracies are perceived to naturally adopt human rights norms as they largely conflate with Western justice systems, but the site of abortion law and access is claire pierson and fiona bloomer / abortion and human rights, 173-185 176 J U N E 2 0 1 7 V O L U M E 1 9 N U M B E R 1 Health and Human Rights Journal one where global and local Western norms can in some cases clearly diverge.19 Global norms on women’s human rights constitute particular ideas about gender equity and selfhood. Notions of gender equality often focus on liberal notions of formal rather than substantive equality, that is, making women the same as men through equal political and workforce participation, property and family rights, and equal citizenship. These rights are expressed internationally through the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).20 Although CEDAW has been ratified by 187 of 194 UN member states, it remains the international human rights treaty with the most state reservations, meaning that although states may sign up to the general idea of gender equality, in practice they are not willing to adopt all global norms. Coomaraswamy argues that this is because women’s rights have the least resonance globally and that this lack of resonance prevents the effective implementation of women’s rights.21 Consequently, women’s rights are particularly susceptible to arguments of cultural relativism. Such arguments are framed around religion, culture, tradition, and women’s “natural” place in society, and are often presented in a bipolar vision of the world, with the Global North being presented as progressive on women’s rights and the Global South as backward. Our case study, located in Western Europe, begins to break down binary notions of women’s rights in the Global North and South and provides a more complex reading and understanding of women’s rights. Abortion is a complex issue to frame in human rights terminology. There is no particular right to abortion in international law; for example, while the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has articulated that abortion must be provided within the limits of the law in several cases (concerning Poland and the Republic of Ireland); it has not conceded to abortion as a right per se.22 However, there has been an expansion of international and regional human rights standards and jurisprudence that support women’s human right to abortion.23 More severe cases, usually regarding fetal anomaly and sexual crime, are framed around the right to be free from inhumane and degrading treatment, with wider access to abortion framed around the right to private life or social and economic rights, such as the right to health or equality in health care treatment. There is also increasing recognition that the criminalization of abortion is a human rights issue. Alongside this are the competing rights claims that those who are opposed to liberal legislation on abortion make—for example, that the fetus has an equal right to life as a woman and that by restricting abortion, the rights of the vulnerable are being protected. Such arguments often take on a dualistic, binary nature positioning a woman against a fetus, and result in what has been described as a zero-sum game attitude to recognition in abortion rights debates.24 We illustrate the complexity of framing abortion rights in our case study example showing how, despite current and ongoing vernaculizing of abortion rights in Northern Ireland, the macro-political level continues in the main to perpetuate an anti-abortion discourse based on the manipulation of human rights discourse, in contrast to a more complex discussion within wider society on abor-