Free abortion advances in Ireland
Bill moves to upper house; enactment is expected this month
DUBLIN — Fighting off last-ditch resistance, Irish lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill introducing free and legal abortion to a nation that was long a bastion of staunchly conservative Catholicism, seven months after voters repealed a constitutional ban on abortion.
An often heated session of the Parliament’s lower house Wednesday had to be extended several times, as a small number of members — mainly independent conservatives — talked at length on dozens of amendments, almost all of which were voted down by large majorities. The bill’s opponents attempted to prolong the debate even further, which could have derailed the government’s plan to make abortion available in January.
Ultimately, the house approved the bill just before midnight Wednesday by a vote of 90 to 15, with 12 abstentions, and it moved Thursday to the upper house. Ivana Bacik, a Labor Party lawmaker in the upper house, said she thought it very likely that the bill would pass and become law before the holiday recess the week after next.
The bill would allow a woman to seek abortion for any reason up to the 12th week of pregnancy, and later in a case of fatal fetal abnormality or serious risk to a woman’s life or health. It includes a mandatory threeday waiting period after first consulting a doctor.
In May, 66 percent of voters supported a referendum to remove a near-total ban on abortion from Ireland’s Constitution. The ban had been enshrined in the constitution’s Eighth Amendment, approved by 67 percent of the electorate in 1983, when the Roman Catholic Church was still a dominant social and political force in Ireland.
Denied legal abortions at home, several thousand Irish women have sought them abroad each year, mainly in Britain.
This year’s abortion referendum was one of several milestones in a striking liberal shift in Irish society. Voters overwhelmingly approved same-sex marriage in 2015, the country has a gay prime minister, Leo Varadkar, and the government has taken steps to loosen the church’s still-firm grip on most grade school education.
In recent years, a number of scandals, including clerical sexual abuse and the institutional neglect and mistreatment of women and children, have gravely damaged the church’s moral stature in Ireland. Several legal and medical controversies also shook support for the abortion ban, notably the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist who died of sepsis after being denied an abortion to remove a nonviable fetus she was already miscarrying.
Speaking as the parliamentary debate came to a close Wednesday, the health minister, Simon Harris, said that the people had voted “no more” to such cases.
“I look forward to a time, not far away now, when we will be able to assure women experiencing crisis pregnancies that they will be looked after here at home, where they need not fear that they will be stigmatized for their choices or lack the support they and their families need from our health service,” he said.
In a statement released Thursday, Ireland’s Catholic bishops said: “Women’s lives, and the lives of their unborn children, are precious, valued and always deserving of protection. Any law which suggests otherwise would have no moral force. In good conscience it cannot be supported and would have to be resisted.”
Seeking to honor its pledge to make abortion available by Jan. 1, the government had opposed almost all amendments to the bill, from both anti-abortion lawmakers and those who considered the legislation too restrictive.
The key defeat for the anti-abortion caucus came when the house defeated an amendment that would have permitted health care providers with conscientious objections to refuse to refer women to others who would perform the procedure.
The bill recognizes the right of clinicians to refuse to perform abortions on moral grounds, but requires them to refer patients to others who are willing.
Under the proposed law, most abortions up to nine weeks of pregnancy would be conducted with pills prescribed and monitored by general practitioners. Beyond that time, women would have to go to hospital obstetrics departments.
Brendan Crowley, an anti-abortion doctor, said that many of his colleagues, including some who disagree with him on abortion, shared the view that a general practice was not the appropriate place to provide abortions. Many primary-care doctors lack the necessary training, he said, and already operate with too few resources and too many patients.
The bill also drew opposition from some supporters of abortion rights. Lawyers for Choice, a legal advocacy group, voiced concern about what it called vague or restrictive language in cases of risk to women’s lives or health, and campaigned unsuccessfully to eliminate the compulsory three-day waiting period.