Referendum is an opportunity to show we are a compassionate people
ANN Lovett has been on my mind since an Oireachtas committee made its recommendations to the Dáil on legislating for abortion reform. Ann was a 15-year-old schoolgirl who left her classroom and gave birth, alone and outdoors on a winter’s day, at the foot of a grotto to the Virgin Mary – dying the same day from exposure and loss of blood.
Ireland was shocked. Ireland was sorry. Ireland was defensive. Ireland indulged in some inconclusive soul-searching. After which Ireland decided to look away. For the ensuing three decades, we continued to fail girls and young women with crisis pregnancies because we shirked the abortion nettle. Our politicians dodged their responsibilities, and the people tacitly consented to this sin of omission – we took the easy option of leaving it to the courts to make piecemeal judgment on individual cases.
Ann would be 49 if she had lived – instead, her life cut short by ignorance and hypocrisy, she lies in a Longford graveyard with her dead baby. Just four months earlier, Ireland had voted by two to one to add the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, a blanket ban on abortion. It gave the unborn baby equal rights to the mother, which meant an erosion of her rights in practice.
Abortion is never a cause for celebration. But circumstances can arise where a pregnancy is not in the mother’s best interests, and that’s been acknowledged by the Oireachtas Committee on Abortion. Its members who voted for repeal and legislation have shown compassion and courage.
Paula Meehan’s poem inspired by Ann Lovett’s story, ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’, is another memorable exercise in empathy. The poet imagines the statue to a virgin mother looking down on the schoolgirl mother, and ascribes fellow feeling to the inanimate object:
“…she lay down alone at my feet without midwife or doctor or friend to hold her hand,
and she pushed her secret out into the night,
far from the town tucked up in little scandals…”
The Irish people were shamed by what happened on that January day in 1984 in Granard – by that pitiful, needless death. But the Irish people were not mature enough to deal with the truths it exposed, and we continued in wilful blindness.
It is 35 years since a referendum was held on the subject. A generation has passed, and blinkered vision cannot continue to be the default setting. The Citizens’ Assembly pointed the way forward to the politicians, and the Oireachtas committee rose to the challenge. Now it’s over to the Dáil, with the people to have a long overdue say in May or June.
When we go to the polling booths, we should do so in the realisation that making abortion illegal doesn’t magic it away. Rather, it isolates, marginalises and drives our citizens outside the State in search of options.
Failure to reform abortion law discriminates against the poorer members of society because those with access to cash can go abroad. Exporting the issue has tended to suit Irish people’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ mentality. But such ambivalence is no longer acceptable.
Nor is railing against other people’s life choices. It is possible be pro-choice and yet to wish abortions didn’t happen – that there was no necessity for them. But we cannot close our eyes and ears to realities. Society must face up to the reality that crisis pregnancies occur, and women cannot be bullied by legislation into giving birth. Their bodily integrity must be respected.
Some people believe abortion under any circumstances is wrong and they will never deviate from such a position. Others favour free, safe, legal reproductive rights for all. Neither side will convert the other. The bulk of Irish people lie to somewhere in between – a silent majority who will decide this issue while extremes do battle in public. There will be a great deal of heat and noise, but let’s remember that extremes tend not to sway too many new supporters to their cause.
The Catholic Church will take part in the debate, as it is entitled to do so, but not with any exceptional position of privilege. It will be one of many voices seeking to make its case. The Catholic Church didn’t decide to include the Eighth Amendment in the Constitution, the Irish people did that. Now the people have an opportunity to remove it.
MY instinct is that this amendment will be struck out, not because people are pro-abortion, but because most of us understand that life can be complicated. Abortion is a horrible decision to take, but sometimes people are obliged to make tough choices. For too long, the State has interfered in the personal lives of its citizens.
During the referendum campaign, it’s important that we avoid the screaming bouts of previous discussions and listen with respect to one another. As Simon Coveney has noted, this will divide households. But people are fully within their rights to hold opposing views on matters of conscience. It need not descend to vitriol or hysteria, however. We must make a conscious decision to respect others’ rights to make their own call on how they intend to vote.
But some truths should also be ventilated: that doctors deserve clarity, and vulnerable expectant mothers cannot to be left exposed. In living memory, women dropped off unwanted babies on the steps of institutions, or were forced into Magdalene laundries where they gave birth and were made to hand over their children for adoption.
Irish society has a pattern of failing to face up to the consequences of legal or moral diktats. Next year’s referendum is an opportunity for workable laws to be framed rather than the current unworkable legislation. Simultaneously, we should reassess our school sex education programme and ensure it is fit for purpose.
I’ll close by returning to Ann Lovett’s death. The poet Christopher Daybell wrote to the Archdiocese of Armagh about it, receiving a reply dated February 1984 and signed by the diocesan secretary to Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich. The letter on the Catholic primate’s behalf said: “I think her sad death reflects more on her immaturity than on any lack of Christian charity amongst the family and people with whom she lived.”
It was Ann’s own fault, in other words. A 15-year-old brought it on herself. Does the Irish public still think about crisis pregnancies in terms of fault and punishment? I don’t believe we do – the referendum is an opportunity to show that we are a compassionate people.
People are fully within their rights to hold opposing views on matters of conscience. It need not descend into vitriol or hysteria, however