Abortion is a sensitive subject that contains many political and emotional connotations. Despite it being controversial, legalisation of abortion remains an indispensable part of public discourse and debates especially in the context of globalisation and the spread of western human rights. The questions about the beginning of life, about the right to abortion and about the personhood of a fetus have been around for a really long time and since the beginning they have been dividing people into two opposing groups - those who support and those who are opposed to legalisation of abortion. Main topic of this thesis is the Irish abortion referendum that happened earlier this year. This thesis focuses on the discourse of Save the 8th - the activist group who opposed abortion legalisation in Ireland. I will be looking at their Facebook site and categorising the main arguments based on their content emphasis with the help of discourse analysis. I will be dividing the arguments into three main areas I identified: referencing medical authority, referencing women’s rights and referencing the right to life. I shall conclude my thesis with an observation that many of the "anti-choice" arguments use similar vocabulary to "pro-choice" arguments, only to prove opposite points.
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