I moved to Ireland in 2019, a year after abortion had become legal. As a woman born and raised in Germany, reproductive rights had never been a concern for me. I knew that if needed it, I had the option of termination.

I wasn’t aware of my privilege at the time. But when I made Ireland my home, I realised the weight of choosing to live in a country with such a conflicted relationship with reproductive rights.

Legalisation only marks the beginning of processing historical trauma, as well as ensuring that abortion services are accessible to all women living in Ireland.

For most of Irish history, women’s bodies were treated as, in legal terms, the property of religious and nationalist ideologies. Savita Halappanavar, a dentist who passed away in a Galway hospital in 2012 after being denied a life-saving abortion, became the face of the fight for legalisation. Her death followed the devastating cases of Sheila Hodgers, Miss Y and many others, where the lack of necessary abortion care led to women’s decline in physical or mental health, or death.

As a writer, I turn to literature to seek answers. Despite the burst of activist poetry leading up to the 2018 referendum, there is very little literary engagement with the realities of post-repeal Ireland. But legalisation hasn’t drawn a line under the conversation. The shame and silence around abortion are still palpable, and at the time of writing, no poetry collection on........

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