Ireland votes on overturning abortion ban
DUBLIN – Ireland, a once staunchly Catholic country, will hold a national referendum Friday on whether to overturn its strict abortion law, and polls show the vote will be close.
If the measure passes, it will be another milestone for Ireland after it legalized contraception (1979), divorce (1995) and same-sex marriage (2015).
A “Yes” vote to repeal Ireland’s Eighth Amendment, which states a fetus has an equal right to life as the mother, would leave three places in Europe where abortion is illegal unless a woman’s life is at risk: the microstates of Andorra and San Marino and Malta.
According to the Irish government, an average of nine women travel every day from Ireland to England to terminate pregnancies, and three women each day take abortion pills bought online, risking a 14-year jail sentence.
Leo Varadkar, prime minister of Ireland’s center-right government, supports lifting the ban and allowing an abortion up to the 12th week of a preg- nancy. Varadkar was elected Ireland’s first openly gay leader last year — a watershed moment of its own.
The stakes are high for Irish women like Arlette Lyons, 40, of Dublin. Six years ago, Lyons and her husband, Alan, looked forward to the birth of their third child. A scan at 12 weeks showed a buildup of fluid in the fetus’ neck and head and severe- ly under-developed heart and lungs.
Further tests revealed there was no hope. The fetus would die during the pregnancy or within minutes of birth.
“My obstetrician turned to me and said, ‘If you want to end this pregnancy, it certainly won’t be in Ireland. You’ll have to travel to the United Kingdom,’ ” she recalled.
Lyons, like more than 3,000 Irish women each year, traveled to the U.K. to have an abortion.
Some Dublin residents said Friday’s vote has nothing to do with a woman’s right to decide about her body, with religion or with Ireland’s past cruel treatment of women; it is about protecting the rights of the most vulnerable.
“It’s the human rights issue of our time,” said Anne Murray, who advocates against abortions. “If a young girl gets pregnant, and if it’s a ‘crisis pregnancy,’ meaning she does not want it, if she sees an abortion clinic across the road, she’s going to go and use it.”
Gail McElroy, a political scientist at Trinity College Dublin, said Irish voters are split along traditional, predictable patterns — urban vs. rural, young vs. old. Even if the measure does not pass Friday, it will eventually, she said.
For Lyons, who had another child, the change can’t come quickly enough.
“I have been called a baby killer, a murderer, everything. If you get raped in Ireland, you are forced to stay pregnant. It’s crazy, but it’s not shocking anymore,” she said.