On Saturday 26 May 2018, it was confirmed that Ireland had voted overwhelmingly in favour of repealing the eighth amendment, the legal provision that made abortion illegal in almost all circumstances.

The landslide result was the culmination of years of campaigning by grassroots feminist organisations, and has been widely interpreted as proof of Ireland’s increasingly liberal social and political values. With the exception of one county (Donegal) and one demographic (the over-65s), every region and group voted in favour of giving women control over their bodies and lives – proving that this was not a vote swung by urban millennials, but by a near-universal belief in the importance of choice.

Before the referendum, though, there was work to be done. And Mary, Queen of Scots actress Saoirse Ronan, like so many other Irish women, threw her weight behind the campaign. Indeed, she even appeared in a video which outlined the difficulties faced by young pregnant women in Ireland, highlighting the dangers faced by those who are carrying foetuses with fatal abnormalities and young women who are pregnant as a result of sexual abuse or rape.

Stating that these women do not have “full rights over her own body”, the video went on to detail the risk of a 14-year prison sentence these women take when unsafely using illegal abortion pills without medical support.

Saoirse Ronan talks abortion, homosexuality and the power of the Catholic Church