FF TDs ‘to block’ new abortion legislation
Martin facing backlash over 12-week limit
PRO-LIFE Fianna Fail TDs are threatening to block any proposed new laws allowing unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy even if voters back such a proposal in the forthcoming referendum.
The anti-abortion TDs have also warned that the will of the people might never be enacted if voters pass a referendum backing abortion up to 12 weeks due to the composition of the Dail.
Nine Fianna Fail TDs warned they would not be able to vote for legislation underpinning the referendum which would provide for unrestricted abortion regime. They are expected to be supported by several more Fianna Fail TDs.
The warning will pose a major headache to Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who have both allowed their TDs a free vote on any abortion-related legislation.
If both leaders fail to convince the majority of their TDs to voluntarily back the introduction of laws allowing unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks, the outcome of the referendum might never be enacted.
PRO-LIFE Fianna Fail TDs will seek to block any proposed new laws allowing unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy even if voters call for the constitutional change in the forthcoming referendum, the Sunday
Independent can reveal. Anti-abortion TDs have also warned that the will of the people might never be enacted if voters pass a referendum backing abortion up to 12 weeks, due to the composition of the Dail.
Prominent Fianna Fail TD John McGuinness said passing unrestricted abortion laws could a be a “major issue” for the Government.
“The 12 weeks is a real serious issue for lots of people and with the make-up of the Dail the way it is, you don’t know which way it would go,” Mr McGuinness told the Sunday Independent.
Carlow-Kilkenny TD Bobby Aylward said “under no circumstances” would he vote for legislation that would allow unrestricted abortion, even if the referendum passed.
Sligo-Leitrim TD Eamon Scanlon said there is “not a hope” he would vote for new abortion laws and warned the 12 weeks proposal posed a “legal minefield” for the Government.
Several other TDs, including Waterford’s Mary Butler, Donegal’s Pat “the Cope” Gallagher, Louth’s Declan Breathnach, Laois’s Sean Fleming, Cavan/Monaghan’s Brendan Smith and Kerry’s John Brassil also told the Sunday Independent they would not vote for laws allowing unlimited abortion up to 12 weeks, even if the referendum passed.
Three Fianna Fail TDs — Meath East’s Thomas Byrne, Kildare North’s James Lawless and Tipperary’s Jackie Cahill — said they were opposed to new abortion laws but added they would back legislation if the referendum was passed.
The warning will pose a major headache for Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who have both allowed their TDs a free vote on any abortion-related legislation.
If both leaders fail to convince the majority of their TDs to voluntarily back the introduction of laws allowing unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks, the outcome of the referendum might never be enacted.
Mr Martin infuriated his TDs last week when he blindsided them by announcing his support for abortion up to 12 weeks.
His comment came a day after the vast majority of his parliamentary party told him they could not support unrestricted abortion up to three months into pregnancy.
Fianna Fail’s health spokesman, Billy Kelleher — who favours a more liberal abortion regime — was criticised at the meeting for not representing the party’s mixed views on abortion.
Mr Kelleher was a member of the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution and proposed the recommendation that the Government should legislate for abortion up to 12 weeks.
Yesterday, a senior Fianna Fail TD said the committee “bit off more than it could chew” and warned the public wasn’t ready to support the proposal.
Another TD said the Fianna Fail leadership was “not listening to the ordinary Joe in the streets” by backing new abortion laws.
A meeting for Fianna Fail TDs has been organised by Mr Aylward next week in reaction to Mr Martin’s position on abortion.
Pro-life TDs want to ensure their views receive an equal share of media attention as those of the party leader and health spokesman.
After he spoke out against Mr Martin’s stance, Mr Aylward was contacted by several party members who support his campaign to give anti-abortion TDs more airtime.
It is understood he is backed by Galway West TD, Eamon O Cuiv, Cork East’s Kevin O’Keeffe, Cork South West’s Margaret O’Mahony Murphy, Mary Butler, Eamon Scanlon and Cavan Senator Diarmuid Wilson.
Fianna Fail sources have estimated around 70pc of the party is opposed to the introduction of unrestricted abortion.
WOULD the real Leo Varadkar please stand up and be counted? Because it’s hard to be sure, some days, if the Taoiseach stands for anything at all. What does Leo actually believe in, deep down? What principle would he be willing, metaphorically speaking, to die in a ditch defending?
Don’t laugh. There must be something. Mustn’t there?
Unless with Leo what you see really is all you get, and that’s a slick, managerial, spin-doctor creation, whose ultimate legacy will depend on whether he catches an economic wave and rides its crest during a new boom, or flounders in the choppy surge of Brexit and Northern Ireland and the 1,001 problems that can sink a government.
Abortion is one of those matters on which it is hard to tell what the Fine Gael leader really believes. It could be easily cleared up. He could, for instance, just tell us.
He would probably have it said on his behalf that this is exactly what he did last Friday, briefing reporters in Limerick that he backs the removal of the Eighth Amendment from the Constitution, and would reveal in due course what he felt should replace it.
But is that really clarification, or just another game of smoke and mirrors? Essentially, Varadkar seems to be saying he will support whatever is agreed by his own Government, but that feels oxymoronic. This slipperiness has led in recent days to damaging headlines such as: “Varadkar ‘undermining’ debate on abortion with mixed messages.”
On the surface, his hesitancy sounds perfectly reasonable. “I’d actually like to sit down and see the question in black and white, to know what I’m being asked, before I make up my mind,” ought to be every voter’s position.
But he’s not in the same position as any other voter. Unlike them, he has some input into what the wording of the referendum question will be. It won’t just be presented to the Cabinet as a fait accompli, take it or leave it.
There will be discussion, compromise, and as Taoiseach, he will be intimately involved in that process. What that input will be remains anybody’s guess. In the meantime, the country must guess what he thinks.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin was also criticised for not taking a stance, which was slightly unfair, since he doesn’t have the same chance to influence the final wording. In any case, he cleared up his own position during the Dail debate on Thursday.
Some called that a brave move because it challenged pro-life sentiment within his party and set him at odds with sections of Irish opinion Fianna Fail traditionally relies upon for support. But it would be a mistake to be too impressed; congratulations should not be too effusive for simply doing one’s job. Leaders gotta lead. If only Leo Varadkar knew that. He’s not so much leading from the front on abortion as hanging back to see how things turn out.
And it’s not just on this issue that he dithers: it is fast becoming his modus operandi. He has been equally muddled over Northern Ireland, and also rowed back quicker than an inexperienced canoeist heading towards the rapids when his comments about being a Taoiseach for people who “get up early in the morning” went down badly. By the time he had finished eating humble pie on that one, he sounded as if he meant the phrase to include practically everyone — rendering it as meaningless as the inspirational motto in a fortune cookie.
The contrast with his own Health Minister could not be greater. Despite being one of the youngest members of the Dail, the still relatively inexperienced Simon Harris has taken on a responsibility many more senior politicians have shirked for decades.
It could be that the ambitious TD has done so for political expediency. He went from a pro-life to a pro-choice position with remarkably few steps in-between, and while he talks often about that journey, it’s not altogether clear what led him there — unless he simply saw which way the wind was blowing and decided, pragmatically, to bend with it.
There would be no great dishonour in that. A wise man chooses his battles. It is a pity, though, that the Health Minister’s new evangelism for ditching the Eighth Amendment has been accompanied by the adoption of some of the overwrought language favoured by those who campaign in favour of abortion. Much of what he said in the Dail, as he opened the Eighth debate, was an appeal to emotion rather than reason.
Harris had barely begun speaking before he was waxing lyrical about the “sundered silence of mother and baby homes” and feeling the “damp cold of the Magdalene laundries creeping into our bones”.
He continued: “I think of another cold January like this one in 1984, when the 15-year-old Ann Lovett gave birth alone to her son beneath a statue of Our Lady. The death of Ann and her baby son in these stark and lonely circumstances is a memory that chills us still and one we should not forget.” The mood music was reminiscent of the infamous online ad by Father Ted co-writer Graham Linehan for Amnesty, which depicted Ireland as a sinister, dark, Gothic place ruled with an iron fist by the Catholic Church.
Regardless of how the country votes in the forthcoming referendum, there is no danger of Ireland succumbing to Catholic theocracy; but presumably we should expect more of the same as the weeks tick down to the referendum.
Much of what Simon Harris said was admirably measured, not least his acknowledgement that “no matter what may divide us, I accept that all of us are trying to do what is right. All of us are guided by our own conscience and our own sense of humanity”.
Fine words, but he would do well to reflect on how invoking the Kerry Babies, to name but one example, helps to foster that atmosphere of mutual respect. If pro-lifers are to bear the psychological burden of that horrific legacy, pro-choicers can hardly complain if they in turn are blamed for the way in which the provision of abortion has become, in many supposedly liberal societies, a depersonalised, dehumanising industry.
Reducing the referendum to “do you, or do you not, care about women?” is typical of modern political squabbles, in which the aim is not to persuade opponents of the strength of one’s argument, but to make them feel like bad people for disagreeing.
Even if the minister’s attempt to contextualise the 170,000 “faceless” Irish women who have had abortions in the UK since 1980 is legitimate, making the story about individuals in crisis rather than abortion itself carries some risk of over-simplification.
This is the same game critics of the Government play when listing the number of patients waiting each day on trolleys in hospitals around the country. It’s an effective weapon, but the focus quickly shifts to the alleged heartlessness of the system, rather than the radical remedies that might help.
Same with abortion. The argument invariably goes that it should be a medical matter, left between a woman and her doctor; but if the debate really was science-led then the increasing sophistication of obstetrics research — including advances in surgery on the foetus in the womb and greater knowledge about the extent of foetal pain — should be making it harder to arrive at moral certainty, not easier.
Abortion is instead a cultural issue, as was same-sex marriage. Being pro-choice has become a badge of identity, signalling one’s alignment with contemporary mores, and unless a politician has a committed pro-life stance it would be absurd to suddenly reverse, there is no reward in standing out from the progressive crowd. It only brings trouble. That’s why it’s obvious, for all his prevaricating, that the Taoiseach will eventually fall behind the emerging political consensus on abortion, especially when the alternative is to go round in circles for another generation.
Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Ruth Coppinger was probably most honest of all when she said about the abortion debate: “I am tired of listening to myself, never mind what other people are tired of listening to.”
She surely speaks for a majority of people in the country, who are weary of having the same argument over and over again, which is also why the referendum, whatever the wording, will pass, and why the Taoiseach will, sooner rather than later, be singing from the same hymn sheet as Micheal Martin.
So why not have the courage to put his cards on the table now?
‘Abortion is really a cultural, not a scientific or medical, issue’