Tag Archives: Eighth amendment referendum

YES – Repeal the Eighth 66.4%!

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It’s the numbers that make the Repeal the Eighth Amendment referendum such a brilliant result.  And a result not just for Ireland but one awaited in many other countries.

In the last week or so of the campaign it was widely believed that the result would be close, and I was preparing to write a post that the narrow win would only be another beginning, that the fight to introduce real abortion rights would face the opposition of a ‘pro-life’ movement that would not accept the result.

We would be faced with an opposition prepared to oppose the limited legalisation proposed by the Government and a movement claiming, as it had already done, that the referendum was in some sense rigged, that they had been ‘silenced’, that the result was not fair and not therefore accepted.

None of that now has any credibility.  Not just in Dublin; not just in urban Ireland; not just among the young; not just among the middle classes and not just among women. The majority in all areas, except in one constituency, and among all age groups, except the eldest, not just women but also men, voted YES to repeal.

There was some concern that those most committed were those zealots inspired by the Catholic Church, all the more determined, as they witness the credibility of their church rotting in front of their eyes.

But it was the YES voters who made sure the turnout was so large, and it was those who witnessed the experience of Savita Halappanaver and were appalled; who appreciated the experience of the thousands of women forced to travel for an abortion – it was they who turned out and determined the result.

It was the YES voters, the young Irish women travelling from Britain, Europe, Australia, Japan and Brazil just to vote, who demonstrated the passion that impressed most.

I was in Leitrim, Sligo and Mayo at the start of the week and the majority of posters were calling for No.  Yet in all the areas I visited the majority voted Yes.

The TV pundits are saying the ‘quiet’ and ‘shy’ voters, who were expected to be NO voters, would make the result closer, but it was the ‘quiet’ and ‘shy’ YES voters who won it, and they won’t be so shy and quite in future.  It’s those who had the courage to speak out who will have given many of these voters the confidence to vote YES.

Thirty-five years ago, the electorate voted two to one to put a constitutional ban on already-illegal abortion into the State’s constitution. But that was before the exposure of the Church’s litany of abuse of women and children and before the X case and that of Savita Halappanaver, and before many women gained the confidence to tell the truth that abortion was already a choice of many Irish women and weren’t prepared to accept any stigma for that choice.

In 2018 a majority of two-to-one voted to repeal the amendment put in place in 1983 and it is being said that a revolution has taken place in the views of many Irish people – a revolution that has developed over the past years, not weeks or months.

Exit polls record that the majority had decided how to vote before the campaign and that the question of choice was what made up their mind.  This, along with the stronger support among the young, means this victory is not going to be reversed.

But this does not mean that I was wholly mistaken in saying that a new fight would just be beginning.

The reactionaries will not be able to prevent the Government’s legislation passing, although we must be ever-vigilant.  The real fight will be to make access to abortion a reality and not just a legal right and practical difficulty.

This will require not just opposition to ‘pro-life’ intimidation, but also a strenuous fight to make the medical profession responsive to women’s needs and a political campaign to make the state provide the health services women need to turn their often-fine words into reality.

Leo Varadkar basked in the reflected glory of a YES victory and went off on a Fine Gael party political broadcast for a moment in his speech after the result, but the record of the Irish state in providing health services for its people is not one to be particularly proud of.

We are still a long way from a society where women can decide whether to have children based on a free choice in which they are neither compelled by economic and social circumstance nor the diktats of misogynist religion and its state helpers.  Such a society requires an altogether more wide-ranging struggle, but the YES vote has brought that society closer and the real obstacles to it more clearly into view.

 

 

Repeal the Eighth!

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It is one of the ironies that afflicts the Irish State when it comes to its treatment of women that the last couple of weeks has seen its health services in the dock for its disregard for their health at the same time as the climax to the referendum on whether to repeal the amendment to the constitution that criminalises abortion.

The Health Services Executive (HSE) decided that it would not inform women that the cervical smear test that showed a negative result was wrong, and that they did in fact have cancer.  At least 162 were not informed about their findings.  Of those who could have had earlier intervention if the tests had not been false 18 have died.

Politicians are now declaring their shock, and sympathy with the women and their families, while they sit on top of a state with a long, long history of such secrecy and disregard for women’s rights.  In fact, many are now defending this denial of rights through their support to retain the eighth amendment, which has led to women dying because of its elevation of the foetus over the woman who carries it.

The issue in both is about control.  Do women have control over their own bodies?

In the case of the cervical smear scandal, it was the state and its medical professionals who decided that women would not know about the potential threat to their life.  In the case of women who seek to control their own bodies through control of their womb, it is the state and its medical professionals who are held up as arbiters of the extent of this control, with some seeking to limit it altogether.

If tragedies alone led to change then fundamental change would have happened a long time ago, but it has taken the struggle of women and the revelation of the scandalous behaviour of the Catholic Church to bring about change.

The failures of the outsourced cervical screening service and the HSE were exposed not through any change of heart by the state, but by the bravery of one woman suffering from terminal cancer, who took a court case against the US testing company.  In the case of the fight for abortion rights, it was not the X case or the death of Savita Halappanaver or any of the others that has made repeal of the eighth a possibility.  These would have shocked and appalled and led to nothing but the next tragedy, were it not for the movement to demand the rights of women, led by women themselves.

A vital factor nevertheless has undoubtedly been the crushing of the reputation of the Catholic Church, whose moral authority has been fatally undermined for many because of the child abuse carried out by its priests and ‘holy’ orders; its actions to protect the abusers by moving them around the country so they could abuse again, and their failure to pay the minimal compensation to their victims that they campaigned shamelessly to reduce or avoid.

Yet still, despite this litany of infamy, they control the vast majority of primary schools and have massive influence over health service provision.  They continue to do so because of a continuing alliance with the state.

On 25th there is a chance to continue the campaign to reverse this, and repeal the eighth amendment.  Opinion polls show a reduced but still substantial lead in favour of repeal, with support for repeal highest among the young and urban population, especially in Dublin.  Views on both sides appears to have strengthened, hardly surprising given the age-old tactics of the reactionary ‘pro-life’ campaign.

If repealed the Government has promised to legislate for limited abortion rights up to 12 weeks and the anti-abortion rights campaigners have claimed this will open up Ireland to UK-type abortion provision, including abortion of the disabled.  Nothing they can do however will prevent UK abortions, including those of the thousands who travel from Ireland to have the procedure carried out.  Not that it hasn’t been tried, but imprisoning 14 year old rape victims who become pregnant was not a popular policy.

The growth in support for women’s rights among the young and urban population testifies to a transition and transformation in views, also reflected in opinion polls.  While 54% of respondents in the latest agreed with the statement that they have reservations about provision of abortion but feel the 12 weeks in  proposed legislation is “reasonable compromise’; 62% also agreed that “the law in Ireland needs to recognise a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.”

This movement for, and of, women to take control is reflected not just in the possibility of repeal but in the potential for a continuing movement to advance women’s rights and in the courage of some to express their support for abortion rights and opposition to the insults of its reactionary opponents.

Working class women will not gain control over their lives without a veritable social revolution that they can only achieve in unity with working class men, but such unity is impossible if women are unable to control their own bodies and own lives in the most basic of ways.  For a socialist, these are aspects of a single struggle against oppression and for a new fee society in which everyone can flourish.