‘Quiet revolution’ leads to abortion rights win in Ireland
Diverse electorate votes 2-to-1 to repeal ban
DUBLIN — In the end, it wasn’t even close.
Irish voters — young and old, male and female, farming types and city-bred folk — endorsed expunging an abortion ban from their largely Catholic country’s constitution by a 2-to-1 margin, referendum results compiled Saturday showed.
The decisive outcome of the landmark referendum held Friday exceeded expectations and was cast as a historic victory for women’s rights.
Since 1983, the now-repealed Eighth Amendment had forced women seeking to terminate pregnancies to go abroad for abortions, bear children conceived through rape or incest, or take illegal measures at home.
As the final tally showed over 66 percent of voters supporting lifting the ban, crowds at Dublin Castle began chanting “Savita! Savita!” in honor of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old who died of sepsis during a miscarriage after being denied an abortion at a Galway hospital in 2012.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar called the victory the “culmination of a quiet revolution.”
“I said in recent days that this was a once-in-a-generation vote. Today I believe we have voted for the next generation,” said Varadkar, who is Ireland’s first openly gay leader and first from an ethnic minority group.
The next battleground is likely to be Ireland’s Parliament, where the government led by Varadkar hopes to capitalize on the fresh momentum and enact legislation spelling out the conditions under which abortions would be legal.
The plan is to allow abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and in special cases after the first trimester, likely ending the trail of Irish women who go elsewhere — mostly Britain — by the thousands each year.
Some called for the new abortion
legislation to be named “Savita’s law.” “We’ve got justice for Savita,” Andanappa Yalagi, the woman’s father, told the Hindustan Times. “What happened to her will not happen to any other family.”
John McGuirk, spokesman for the Save the 8th group, told RTE that many Irish citizens would not recognize the country in which they were waking up. The group said on its website that the referendum was a “tragedy of historic proportions,” but McGuirk said the vote must still be respected.
The support for lifting the ban highlights the liberalization of historically Catholic Ireland, marking the diminishing influence of the Church and a desire to align Irish secular laws with the other countries of Europe.
First it was same-sex marriage, approved here in 2015, and now it will be the consignment to history of the Eighth Amendment.
“This is a monumental day for women in Ireland,” Orla O’Connor, co-director of the Together for Yes group, said. “This is about women taking their rightful place in Irish society, finally.”
The vote is a “rejection of an Ireland that treated women as second-class citizens,” she said.
When the final count was announced at Dublin Castle, more than 1,000 people were gathered outside singing, chanting and toasting one another with Champagne despite a light rain.
For many, the victory was vindication after years of opposing the abortion ban, which required Irish authorities to defend the lives of a woman and a fetus as equals under the law from the moment of conception.
In practical terms, the amendment outlawed all abortions until 2014, when terminations in rare cases when a woman’s life was at risk started being allowed.
Irish Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone said she was deeply moved by the vote.
“I’m especially grateful to the women of Ireland who came forward to provide their personal testimony about the hard times that they endured, the stress and the trauma that they experienced because of the Eighth Amendment,” she said.
Abortions approved by doctors are allowed in the rest of Britain until the 24th week of pregnancy, but not in Northern Ireland, where the procedure is limited to cases when a woman’s life is at risk.
Ireland’s prime minister noted that Saturday’s win for legalizing abortion could not right past wrongs but could prevent future ones.
“The wrenching pain of decades of mistreatment of Irish women cannot be unlived,” Varadkar, who backed repeal, said. “However, today we have ensured that it does not have to be lived again.”