The Irish Exception
Then if you turn to the arenas where the pro-choice vision assumes that anti-abortion laws prod a society toward Gilead, you see … a normal-seeming and sometimes more-feminist-than-average Western country. Ireland’s maternal mortality rates are consistently low, not high, relative to its neighbors and similar countries. It has a female work force participation rate slightly below the Western European norm, but it has around the same share of women in management as Switzerland or Norway or Belgium, and the World Economic Forum’s latest “gender gap” assessment placed Ireland eighth-best in the world in terms of achieving social and economic parity between the sexes.
.. In sum, with its restrictive abortion laws, generous family policy and otherwise modern economy, Ireland seems to have achieved or maintained some notable pro-life and pro-family goals without compromising women’s health or female opportunities relative to countries with abortion on demand.