Dr Merike Blofield is associate professor of political science . A native of Finland, she has lived in Canada, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and the United States. Dr Blofield has published two books. These are Care Work and Class: Domestic Workers’ Struggle for Equal Rights in Latin America (published by Pennsylvania State University Press) and The Politics of Moral Sin: Abortion and Divorce in Spain, Chile and Argentina (published by Rutledge). She has also edited a volume called The Great Gap: Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Latin America (published by Pennsylvania State University Press). Dr Blofield has won the National Women’s Studies Association, Sara A. Whaley Book Award for 2013. Among other journals, she has published in Comparative Politics, Latin American Research Review and Social Politics.

Given the ongoing ‘Repeal the 8th‘ campaign in Ireland and the ‘Black Protest‘ in Poland, it was incredibly informative to speak with an expert on how Catholicism has influenced abortion law internationally.