Why, as a Catholic, I would vote to repeal the Eighth
Abortion. Yes, I know. Sorry. It’s one of those words that has the power to kill a conversation, if you’ll pardon the expression. In Ireland, we were sworn to silence, our lips sealed tighter than our knees, at the nuns’ stern behest.
That this very day my home country – I was born in the North but to Southern parents and I have an Irish passport – is holding a noisy, impassioned referendum on abortion is nothing short of astonishing to me.
Except vanishingly few people are using the “a” word; even the most vehement pro-choice activists baulk at describing themselves as proabortionists. And who wouldn’t?
Instead they are calling for a Repeal of the Eighth, the Eighth being a 1983 amendment to the Irish Constitution that gives a foetus the same right to life as the mother, even if it is conceived as a result of rape or incest, or diagnosed with a fatal abnormality.
Its repeal would allow unrestricted terminations of pregnancies for up to 12 weeks, thereby bringing it into line with every other country in Western Europe (except for Northern Ireland, obviously, where nobody dares upset the knife-edge equilibrium by asking anyone about anything).
That Ireland is even talking about a change in its draconian law is a reflection of how the Catholic Church’s stranglehold on daily life has loosened.
It’s not due to any great liberal epiphany on the part of the clergy mind you, but simply because culturally liberal younger generations are no longer in thrall to the local priest. Just over 78 per cent of the Irish identify as Catholic, but weekly Mass attendance is as low as 2 per cent in some parishes, according to an independent report carried out for the Dublin Council of Priests.
It’s a far cry from my childhood when Mass (all five of us girls in bonnets) was mandatory and we were schooled in stifling convents, suffused with guilt and self-reproach.
From the age of five we learned how the Virgin Mary would weep bitter tears if she heard a girl whistling or saw her disporting herself in shorts. The Lord, we were told, would smite any girl who wore patent shoes because the boys could look up her skirt, or who lost all decency and restraint because her drink was spiked.
No that’s not a misprint; Ireland’s God – like most deities – has always been especially vengeful when it comes to female sin, however unwittingly committed. It was our duty as young women to guard our virtue because everybody knew men were at the mercy of their urges. The blame would be ours alone to bear.
Abortion was a mortal sin. For murdering a baby you would first be cast on to the pyre of family disgrace and then, for all eternity, burn in the fires of hell. But, contradictorily, pregnancy was worse.
Aged 15, none of us having so much as kissed a boy, my friends and I agreed that on balance it was probably better to steal money, board a ferry to England, have a secret termination and eventually burn in hell than tell our mothers we were expecting.
That unholy paradox has always lain at the heart of Ireland’s attitude to conception out of wedlock. Abortion was impossible, life deemed sacred – yet once born, an illegitimate child would be an unending source of humiliation, whispers and a lifetime of stigma.
Unmarried mothers were ostracised, packed off to the torment of Magdalene Laundries, their babies given away or quietly buried. The last one wasn’t closed until 1996. In 2013 the then-taoiseach Enda Kenny issued a formal state apology, and a
£50 million compensation scheme for survivors was set up.
The historically misogynist Catholic Church has refused to contribute a single penny to that fund. It has also, conspicuously, declined to campaign beyond the pulpit on behalf of keeping the Eighth Amendment. An unexpectedly wise move.
It is down to secular spokespeople to argue in favour of the current law. Their case is undermined by the death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012 from sepsis after being catastrophically refused an abortion during miscarriage. Even though the baby was surely dead, medics would not intervene. Just in case.
In 2011, Amanda Mellet was forced to travel to England to terminate a pregnancy with fatal foetal anomaly. She took her case to the UN Human Rights Committee, which concluded that Ireland’s near-total abortion ban was discriminatory and amounted to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.
Five years later, she received compensation from the Irish government. Surely even an ardent pro-lifer would agree these are appalling breaches of humanity?
Most recent figures from the Department of Health show that in 2016 more than 3,200 abortions were performed in the UK on women who had travelled from the Republic of Ireland.
Here in 2018, hundreds of Irish women are flying back to their native land to cast their vote in today’s referendum. Most of those posting on social media are in favour of repeal.
Others argue that while some common sense change is necessary, abortion on demand would be immoral and sinful. I would say to them that the morality card has always been used to curb women’s basic rights in every religion.
I believe abortion is a terrible, tragic thing. But sometimes it is a horribly necessary terrible, tragic thing. Changing the law is about giving Irish women the long overdue freedom of choice.
I would moot that those who would continue to restrict our rights are the self-same sanctimonious whited sepulchres gossiping in the pews who would cast the first aspersion at a pregnancy out of marriage.
It’s easy to love God. Loving your fellow human beings is a much bigger ask.
A vote to Repeal the Eighth is a vote for tolerance. I hope with all my heart it comes to pass. But I do pray few will want to use it.