Irish parliament passes abortion bill
Referendum this year supported lifting ban, but conservatives fought to end
DUBLIN— Fighting off last-ditch resistance, Irish lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill introducing free and legal abortion to a nation that was long a bastion of staunchly conservative Catholicism, seven months after voters repealed a constitutional ban on abortion.
An often-heated session of the parliament’s lower house Wednesday had to be extended several times as a small number of members — mainly independent conservatives — talked at length on dozens of amendments, almost all of which were voted down by large majorities. The bill’s opponents attempted to prolong the debate even further, which could have derailed the government’s plan to make abortion available in January.
Ultimately, the house approved the bill just before midnight Wednesday by a vote of 90 to 15, with 12 abstentions, and it moved Thursday to the upper house. Ivana Bacik, a Labour Party lawmaker in the upper house, said she thought it very likely that the bill would pass and become law before the holiday recess the week after next.
The bill would allow a woman to seek abortion for any reason up to the 12th week of pregnancy and later in a case of fatal fetal abnormality or serious risk to a woman’s life or health. It includes a mandatory threeday waiting period after first consulting a doctor.
In May, 66 per cent of voters supported a referendum to remove a near-total ban on abortion from Ireland’s Constitution.
The ban had been enshrined in the constitution’s Eighth Amendment, approved by 67 per cent of the electorate in 1983, when the Roman Catholic Church was still a dominant social and political force in Ireland.
Denied legal abortions at home, several thousand Irish people have sought them abroad each year, mainly in Britain.
This year’s abortion referendum was one of several milestones in a striking liberal shift in Irish society.
Voters overwhelmingly approved same-sex marriage in 2015, the country has a gay prime minister, Leo Varadkar, and the government has taken steps to loosen the church’s still-firm grip on most gradeschool education.
In recent years, a number of scandals, including clerical sexual abuse and the institutional neglect and mistreatment of women and children, have gravely damaged the church’s moral stature in Ireland.
Several legal and medical controversies also shook support for the abortion ban, notably the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist who died of sepsis after being denied an abortion to remove a nonviable fetus she was already miscarrying.
Speaking as the parliamentary debate came to a close Wednesday, the health minister, Simon Harris, said that the people had voted “no more” to such cases.
“I look forward to a time, not far away now, when we will be able to assure women experiencing crisis pregnancies that they will be looked after here at home, where they need not fear that they will be stigmatized for their choices or lack the support they and their families need from our health service,” he said.
Seeking to honour its pledge to make abortion available by Jan. 1, the government had opposed almost all amendments to the bill, from both anti-abortion lawmakers and those who considered the legislation too restrictive.