This book is the product of a conference held at the University of Limerick in March 2008, and its relatively fast publication has ensured that it remains topical. The focus of the conference and the resultant book was the constitutional referendum held in the Republic of Ireland on 7 September 1983 that led to the insertion of the Eighth Amendment, which became Article 40.3.3°, into the Constitution and its impact since then. The Article effectively banned abortion, acknowledging “the right to life of the unborn,” though as Schweppe points out in the introduction, the word “abortion” is not mentioned in the Article (1).

The aim of the book is to take a multidisciplinary approach to try and consider what “protecting the `right to life of the unborn' means in Ireland today” (1). The work is divided into four parts: “The Politics of Article 40.3.3°”; “The Maternal-Foetal Conflict”; “Article 40.3.3° and the Law”; and “Reproduction, Medicine, Health and Ethics.” The authors are drawn from a range of backgrounds and academic disciplines including law, medicine, and sociology. However, while this ensures that the book is of interest to a wide audience, it also feels slightly uneven in its coverage. This is perhaps also related to the fact that chapters are of varying lengths, with some over thirty pages long, while others are as short as sixteen, with a variety of academic writing styles. Similarly, the fact that the chapters were originally conference papers and that the rapid turnaround into print has resulted in some duplication of detail—at points this feels rather repetitive. This said, overall the book provides a very useful overview of abortion legislation and opens up some contemporary areas of debate such as assisted human reproduction and its relationship to Article 40.3.3°.

Part 1 of the book offers a very good overview of the legislation and abortion rights activism since 1983, by Sandra McAvoy. This is particularly useful in providing the historic and contextual background to important events such as the X Case in 1992 and the D Case in 2007, the latter being the focus of Lisa Smyth's chapter. These two cases challenged the legislation and brought the issue of abortion back into the public gaze. X Case involved a fourteen-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant; when it was discovered that she planned to travel to England for an abortion, the attorney general took out an injunction to prevent her from traveling. Amid public outcry, the Supreme Court overruled the High Court's decision. D Case involved a seventeen-year-old girl under the care of the state who wanted to travel for an abortion, having received a diagnosis of severe fetal abnormality. The Health Service Executive (HSE) who was responsible for the girl tried to prevent her from leaving the country; however, D contested the HSE's actions in the High Court and was successful in winning the right to travel. Morgan Healey's chapter on Irish female politician's attitudes toward abortion is particularly interesting in demonstrating the reluctance to take a firm stance on the issues or even to engage in discussion due to the bitterness of the debate in the past.

In section 2—“The Maternal-Foetal Conflict”—the difficult issue of what protecting the fetus means in reality is considered from a variety of perspectives. Neville Cox considers the issue of the constitutional protection of unborn life in a comparative perspective and challenges the efficacy of the legislation in reality. Eimear Spain's chapter discusses the issue of unwanted third-party interference with a fetus and how the interests and rights of both fetus and mother could be legally protected. Both Liam Curran and Gerard Casey consider the issue of intervening in the protection of the fetus from the actions of the mother. Liam Curran's chapter on the maternal consumption of drugs and alcohol in pregnancy highlights the contradiction within Irish legislation that, while protecting the unborn via Article 40.3.3°, does not provide “any form of interventionist practise … to secure and vindicate the life of the unborn” (130). He concludes that there is a vital need to develop well-coordinated social policies to protect both mother and child. Gerard Casey considers these issues from a legal perspective, how the issue is legislated across the world, and how Ireland might deal with such concerns.

The third section of the book considers Article 40.3.3° and the law. William Binchy provides an in-depth commentary on how Article 40.3.3° fits into the Irish Constitution and provides a critique of how the judiciary has interpreted it. Siobhan Mullally considers the position of Ireland's abortion legislation within a European and global context and the contemporary issue of citizenship as demonstrated in the Baby O case in 2002. Karen Brennan provides a welcome overview of abortion law in Northern Ireland, so often ignored in discussions of abortion. She reveals the ambiguous nature of the guidelines on abortion and the large numbers of women who travel elsewhere to have abortions. Peter Morriss questions the lack of legislation on abortion in Ireland before 1983, which he argues is puzzling considering the amount of legislative changes introduced in the early years of the state's existence.

The final section of the book considers a number of contemporary issues that are affected by Article 40.3.3°. Deirdre Madden reveals the difficulties surrounding the interpretation of Article 40.3.3° with reference to in vitro fertilization and demonstrates the need to clarify the law on assisted human reproduction. Ruth Fletcher considers Article 40.3.3° within a reproductive justice framework and argues for a balanced consideration of the rights of women against the rights of fetal life. Jennifer Schweppe demonstrates the “incoherency and inconsistency” in the approach of the state toward women traveling for abortions and argues for a legislative change to either clarify how the rights of the unborn are to be protected or to remove the legislation altogether. Finally, Patricia Casey provides an overview of the debates and scholarship on the issue of psychological effects of abortion and demonstrates the need for support services to be provided.

As can be seen, the book covers a huge range of issues, and for the reader seeking a chapter on a particular specialist topic, it will be very useful. However, for a nonlegal specialist, the technical legal language and dense argument in some chapters was rather hard to follow and compounded by the repetition of content. Nonetheless, what this collection does is to illustrate how Article 40.3.3° has implications beyond abortion and that this debate has not gone away.