Ireland sheds its historic culture at a speed that amazes
The republic is on a roll, delighted with its new image as a progressive, youthful country
What next for Ireland now that the republic has astounded the pundits by producing a landslide in favour of overturning the 1983 constitutional amendment that gave equal rights to the unborn? Down south euphoria dominates. It is a startling change. I’m one of those who emigrated because I hated being controlled by a joyless, bullying, intolerant version of Catholicism combined with conservative peasant values. The speed with which Ireland has latterly sloughed off its historic culture amazes me.
Joining the EU in 1973 helped open the Irish mind. Lobby groups and combative lawyers secured legislative loosening of censorship and the sale of contraceptives. A ruling in 1988 that Irish law prohibiting male homosexual activities contravened the European Convention on Human Rights led to its decriminalisation in 1993.
But divorce and abortion were protected by the constitution and the church’s attitude to the preservation of “faith and morals” was unchanged. Pro-life pressure resulted in 1983 in the 8th amendment to the constitution that was voted down on Friday.
From the Thirties onwards, as Irish governments avoided labour agitation by exporting its superfluous people, they dealt with social problems by having the clergy run hospitals, schools, reformatories, orphanages, hostels and homes for unmarried mothers. The grip of the church began to slip in the Eighties with the exposure of scandals involving individual high-profile clerics and revelations of the suffering of children and women in various institutions.
Only 36 per cent had voted for the legalisation of divorce in 1986, but it passed in 1996 with 62 per cent. Abortion was the biggest taboo, but a hard case in 1992 changed public opinion.
A 14-year-old told her mother she felt suicidal because she was pregnant after rape by a neighbour, so the family decided to take her for an abortion in the UK, where a few thousand women went every year. Their inquiry to the police if DNA from the aborted foetus would be admissible as evidence led to the attorney-general taking an injunction to prevent her from travelling. It was overturned by a Supreme Court ruling that in the case of “a real and substantial risk” to her life, abortion was legal if there was the possibility of suicide but not for a risk to her health.
By this time, Miss X had miscarried, but the public were agitated. The 8th amendment came under scrutiny after the death from a septic miscarriage in 2012 of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian dentist. It was reported that she had begged for an abortion and had been refused. It would later emerge that her death was due more to medical incompetence and carelessness than denial of abortion, but few care about the facts.
Ireland is on a roll, delighted with its new image as a progressive, youthful country that voted for single sex marriage in 2015. All major political parties with few exceptions backed repeal of the 8th including Sinn Fein, which rebranded itself as a progressive party that would take the battle on abortion to Northern Ireland. There will be more rows and bad feeling in Northern Ireland as Sinn Fein uses the result as a bludgeon against the DUP. But Jason O’Mahony, a decent liberal, deserves the last word.
“This is a great day. But spare a thought for the thousands of good people, our friends, relatives and colleagues, who voted no in good conscience. This will devastate many of them. This isn’t the US. Let’s not hate each other after this.” ■ Ruth Dudley Edwards is an Irish historian, crime novelist, journalist and broadcaster.
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