Voting won’t stop the arguments – but can finally bring resolution
THIS time next week we will be in referendum result review mode – and many of you will hope even that can end quickly. Referendums do not often enthuse Irish citizens, and ones on this dreaded subject, vital though it is, have even less popular appeal.
This coming Friday we will be invited for the fourth time in 35 years to address the most divisive topic of abortion.
In the last three referendums we were asked a total of five questions and it is worth doing a quick look back to see how we managed through.
Working backwards, many people – even keen students of current affairs – do not remember the last referendum which was on March 6, 2002. It was the product of years of careful consultation by thenTaoiseach Bertie Ahern and his health minister, one Micheál Martin.
It was the first attempt to address a 10-year-old demand by the Supreme Court to regularise things.
It arose from the notorious “X case” which had convulsed the nation in 1992. It is remembered by some as a retrograde move, since it included a proposal to remove a threat of suicide as grounds for permitting an abortion due to a risk to the mother’s life.
But at the time it was acknowledged that Messrs Ahern and Martin had built a deal of consensus around it in civil society. The Catholic bishops gave guarded approval as did many leading obstetricians.
Fine Gael and Labour in opposition opposed that referendum. On the day, turnout was poor at 43pc, and bad weather in the western half of the country, set against a dry day in Dublin, was seen by some as a factor in the outcome.
It was defeated by 0.8pc, or just 10,000 votes. Mr Ahern, who swept to a general election victory weeks later, made it clear he would not engage with the issue any time soon thereafter.
That political neglect of the topic would persist until July 2013 when Fine Gael Taoiseach Enda Kenny brought in the Protection of Life in Pregnancy Act, losing eight of his parliamentary party in the process.
The previous referendum, in November 1992, had put three propositions to the voters: should Ireland guarantee the right to abortion information; should it afford the right to travel for an abortion; should it restrict the grounds for abortion, removing the danger of suicide as a threat to the mother’s life.
This one was very fraught indeed, caused by the heart-rending case of a 14-year-old girl, pregnant as a result of rape, who was prevented from leaving the country to have an abortion.
A legal appeal on behalf of the girl, known as “X”, led to the Supreme Court ruling that the mother’s life had to take precedence in cases such as this, and that the teenage mother’s life was at risk due to threat of suicide.
Later that same year, voters upheld the right to travel outside the jurisdiction for an abortion and to get abortion information. A third amendment, which would have removed suicide as grounds for allowing abortion, was defeated.
Turnout that day, in November 1992, was 68.2pc. But it was boosted because the referendum was held the same day as a general election. It took more than 20 years to get some clarity on the issue via legislation.
So we are back at the start of all this in the autumn of 1983. Abortion had always been illegal but it was not cited in the 1937 Constitution in the same way as a prohibition on divorce was.
A number of anti-abortion activists wanted a constitutional prohibition to make future abortion legislation more difficult. They persuaded both big political leaders – Charlie Haughey, of Fianna Fáil, and Dr Garret FitzGerald, of Fine Gael – to go with the idea of a referendum. This eventually happened on September 7, 1983, after a national debate which historian Diarmaid Ferriter has described as “one of the most poisonous witnessed in 20thcentury Ireland”.
On the day, just 54pc of the people turned out to vote. The prohibition was carried by a vote of 2:1. The 35-year journey of political and legal contention had begun.
It would repeatedly take us through the national courts and international tribunals like the EU Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. Friday’s vote is an effort to end that journey.
The past referendums have been characterised by sometimes poor and abusive debate. They have had limited appeal beyond the people who hold strong convictions on either side of the argument.
Three referendums, asking five questions, have not delivered a resolution.
In 1992, at the EU Court in Luxembourg, this writer spoke with anti-abortion campaigner Senator Des Hanafin, and asked him whether an important ruling drew a line under the disputes around the issue. “I hope so – but when you’re dealing with abortion, you just never know,” he replied.
The outcome of Friday’s vote will not end often heated debate on this most fundamental issue. But it can offer some form of resolution.
The outcome of Friday’s vote will not end often heated debate on this most fundamental issue