i was looking for a good overview of Kristen Luker's classic work on abortion attitudes (which nicely illustrates your thesis), I stumbled across this:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0SOR/is_/ai_17841591
Examining divorce laws, the author finds that the church didn't play as big a role as one might assume, instead there was a secular argument about divorce as connected to Irish nationalism: asserting an identity to the rest of the world (which, if you look back at the history of opposition to abortion, etc. among whites, as well as the rise of our own genocide movement in the u.s., the desire to populate the white race against the hordes of immigrants was central to the movement. similarly, early feminists who opposed abortion weren't motivated by religion but by what they feared as the decline of women's special moral influence in the world.
Debating Divorce: Moral Conflict in Ireland. - book reviews Susan A. Farrell
Using Ireland as a case study, Michele Dillon explores the divorce debates in modern democratic societies. She also discusses the role of the media in framing the public debate in Ireland with implications for other countries struggling with the issue. What was most enlightening in the book was Dillon's analysis of the church's role in creating the Irish divorce laws and its role in the 1986 referendum. Although opposed to divorce, the institutional church played less of an official role than one might suppose. Lay groups and the dominant political party as well as Ireland's first Prime Minister, Eamon de Valera, saw the issue of divorce as related to Ireland's economic and political life. They believed that Ireland's national identity was strengthened by laws against divorce. Dillon lays out the arguments for this view in a clear and forceful way using an historical analysis combined with an astute political analysis of Ireland's struggle for independence from Great Britain and its attempt to create an uniquely Irish identity after centuries of colonialism.
Her connection of the creation of the divorce laws with family ties to land and the economic stability of Ireland is also quite insightful and demonstrates how supposedly separate "domestic" and "public" spheres are actually inseparable. Although Dillon does not contextualize her work in this theoretical analysis, feminist critics of the false dichotomy between public and private will find Dillon's work a supportive example in the frame of a well-drawn case study of how the creation of a modern nation state used women's and men's domestic affairs to strengthen Irish national identity and economic survival. Anyone interested in the process of Irish independence and the domestic issues that arise with post-colonial nationalism will find Dillon's analysis valuable. The section on the media's involvement is also useful for those interested in how newspapers, radio, and television shape public discourse.
Dillon's analysis of women and the divorce campaign is particularly interesting in light of contemporary debates in feminism about women who seemingly choose the side of patriarchy. In many countries, women are pro-divorce, perceiving the state's support of women's right to leave a marriage for whatever reason a basic underpinning of women's struggle for equality. Some women in Ireland perceived divorce rather as a threat to their status and identity as women. Because women were socialized not to engage in the public sphere of work and were viewed historically in Ireland "as the moral guardians of the family and its stability," Irish women were "more impressed by the anti-divorce message" (p. 81). They were more economically vulnerable than women in other countries and the cultural messages, both religious and appeals to patriotism (a strong family means a strong nation), reinforced each other and resulted in women's participation in the defeat of the referendum. Again, Dillon's full analysis - historical, economic, and cultural - is well-documented and well-written.
What I missed in the book was the wider connections that could have been made to some of the debates in feminism, not only the public-private critiques of modern capitalist society but also the feminist analyses of "right-wing women" and their choices (for one example, see Dworkin 1983). Mentioning Kristen Luker's work on abortion opens the door for this kind of dialogue with the larger feminist critiques but Dillon doesn't follow up. Connections to some of the feminist literature on moral issues and values would also help deepen the connections between Irish issues and wider debates on pro-creative choice as well as marriage and divorce. Dillon discusses values in tension in one chapter but doesn't move the discussion beyond mentioning that Ireland is "an interesting deviation" challenging "the thesis of synchronic modernization. While it has a modern economic and social structure, traditional values continue to be institutionalized in the cultural sphere as demonstrated by the prohibition on divorce and abortion. Ireland ... is an unevenly modernized society" (p. 161). I agree, but I think that use of some feminist postmodern perspectives as well as reference to feminist work on conservative women in the U.S. and women struggling in some Islamic countries might have shed some light on Ireland's seeming "uniqueness." Connections with works by feminist ethicists writing in the area of modern marriage, divorce, and procreative choice such as Beverly Harrison, Mary Hobgood, Barbara Andolsen, and many others would have situated the Irish debate in the larger ethical debate concerning women's resources for choices which are both political and personal as the feminist saying goes.
"let's be civil and nice, but not to the point of obeying the rules of debate as defined by liberal blackmail (in which, discomfort caused by a challenge is seen as some vague form of harassment)."
-- Dwayne Monroe, 11/19/08
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws