Irish vote to overturn restrictive abortion ban

Lopsided tally reflects growing social liberalism in Catholic country

DUBLIN, Ireland — The Irish have swept aside one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the developed world in a landslide vote that reflects Ireland’s emergence as a socially liberal country no longer obedient to Catholic dictates.

With all ballots counted and turnout at a near-historic high, election officials reported Saturday that 66.4 percent voted to overturn Ireland’s abortion prohibition and 33.6 percent opposed the measure.

The outcome of the referendum Friday was a decisive win for the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution. The 1983 amendment enshrined an “equal right to life” for mothers and “the unborn” and outlawed almost all abortions — even in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormality or non-life-threatening risk to maternal health.

“What we have seen today is a culmination of a quiet revolution that has been taking place in Ireland for the past 10 or 20 years,” Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said.

The turnout was 64.1 percent — the third highest for a referendum vote since the adoption of the constitution in 1937 and decision to join the European Economic Community in 1972. By comparison, turnout was just over 60 percent when Ireland voted to legalize same-sex marriage in 2015.

Ireland’s political leadership promised that Parliament will quickly pass a new law guaranteeing unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks and beyond that in cases of fatal fetal abnormalities or serious risks to a mother’s health.

That would bring Ireland’s access to abortion in line with the other 27 members of the European Union.

In Ireland, seeking or providing an abortion has been punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Since 2013, there has been an exception for when a mother’s life is at risk.

Varadkar, who is gay and whose right to marry was only accepted in Ireland three years ago, called the vote a turning point. “It’s also a day when we say no more,” the Irish prime minister said. “No more to doctors telling their patients there’s nothing can be done for them in their own country, no more lonely journeys across the Irish Sea, no more stigma as the veil of secrecy is lifted and no more isolation as the burden of shame is gone.”

Simon Harris, Ireland’s minister of health, said a bill would be written this summer and passed by year’s end. “The people of Ireland have told us to get on with it,” he said.

Harris said he was as surprised as anyone with the high turnout and outsize vote for repeal. “If you can find anybody today who said they were expecting this majority, I’d love to meet them. I don’t think anybody was expecting this margin,” he said.

Campaigners for repeal, watching the votes being counted in auditoriums around Ireland, were giddy with news of a landslide.

In Dublin constituencies, the vote topped 75 percent for repeal.

In elderly, traditionally conservative Roscommon-Galway, the only constituency to reject same-sex marriage in the 2015 referendum, the “Yes” vote for overturning the abortion ban was 57 percent.

Exit polls released by Irish broadcaster RTE and from the Irish Times found women outpolled men, but men still supported the yes side. So did farmers and rural counties. Support was largest among the young and urban.

Of the Republic of Ireland’s 26 counties, only Donegal in the far northwest voted down the repeal.

Irish Times columnist Finan O’Toole tweeted: “For all the attempts to divide us into tribes, the exit poll shows that every part of Ireland has voted in broadly the same way, which is to trust women and make them fully equal citizens.”