As the country prepares to hold a referendum on abortion, religiously-motivated opposition to it may be on the wane.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Dublin Saturday for the annual March for Choice, a demonstration calling on Ireland’s government to ease its near-total abortion ban. It was the first major rally organized by pro-choice advocates since the government announced an upcoming referendum: Next summer, the country will vote on whether it should change its abortion laws. The advocates told me that if the referendum works out in their favor, they may not have to organize any more marches.
Ireland’s decision to hold a referendum comes months after a report was issued by the Citizens’ Assembly, a 99-member group appointed by the government to advise it on some of the country’s most divisive issues. After five months of deliberation, the group issued its recommendations calling for unrestricted abortion access. But it’s unclear to what extent the government will adopt the Assembly’s recommendations when it drafts the referendum. Several ministers within the ruling center-right Fine Gael party said they don’t think the recommendations would pass muster in the country’s parliament, let alone in a public referendum. This is presumed in part because abortion has long been taboo among the country’s Roman Catholic majority.
Ireland remains a predominantly Catholic country. Although a 2016 census found that the total number of people identifying as Catholic fell by 132,200 between 2011 and 2016 (a decline that corresponds with the rise in those who identify as having no religion), an overwhelming 78.3 percent still identifies with the Church. But the extent to which the religion’s beliefs and practices govern Irish society has, over the years, undergone a gradual shift—one that some attribute to the weakening of the Church’s status following revelations of clerical child abuse in the 1990s. This shift was marked by a number of other milestones regarded as proof of Ireland’s mounting progressivism, from its 2015 referendum legalizing same-sex marriagein 2015, to the election of Varadkar, the county’s first openly gay premier, in June.
“For a lot of people, myself included, there was a great sense of hope after the marriage-equality referendum passed that finally the Eighth Amendment could be addressed head-on,” Lanigan said. “There’s definitely a sense that with progress comes other progress. … The vast majority of the Irish population voted for it, even though the majority of the Irish population still identifies as Catholic, so that shows that being Catholic and being progressive are not mutually exclusive.”
She added: “We are really living in what can only be called a state of dishonesty. People say it’s hypocritical, but it’s a little bit worse than that.”
Though the outcome of the referendum will depend on what the government ultimately decides to put on the ballot—repeal versus reform, legalization versus increased access—Smyth said she’s optimistic. “I’ve been involved since the end of the 1970s and … I’ve never seen such a big and wide and deep social movement here for change on this issue,” she said. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe we can win this, and we can win this. Whether we will or not is another day’s work.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/ireland-abortion-referendum/541527/
October 9, 2017 at 10:01 am
“…which, under its Eighth Amendment, gives an unborn child equal right to life to that of a pregnant woman,” or to that of a “pro-choice” man, or a baseball player, or a violinist, or an abortionist, or someone named David, or Chuck.
Why can’t you so-called pro-choice folks protect the lives of people who are not yourselves?
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