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Abortion debate leads to ‘British solution’
Analysis by Mary Regan, Political Correspondent
NO Irish politician who has ever had any interest in protecting their own skin likes to hear the word abortion.
Arousing passionate views and emotive debate among liberals and conservatives alike, the canniest political solution has been to not do anything about it unless forced to do so.And even then, court rulings are ignored and a lid is held tightly on the issue until it boils over unexpectedly every so often, scalding all those around it.
The re-emergence of abortion as a political issue in recent weeks is likely to have implications for this Government, causing tensions between Fine Gael and Labour, as well as within both parties.
Having gone away for years, the topic came to the fore not long before last year’s general election when the European Court of Human Rights said the State failed to properly implement the constitutional right to a lawful abortion where a mother’s life is at risk.
It said the State had not given sufficient reason for the delay in legislating for a woman’s right to access abortion since the 1992 Supreme Court ruling that it was permissible when there was a risk to the life of the mother.
The salvo from Europe meant all parties had to address the issue to a small degree in the run-up to an election dominated by the economy.
In its pre-election manifesto, Labour said it would legislate for the X case ruling to protect the right of women whose lives are at risk to have an abortion here.
Fine Gael’s approach was entirely different. Under the “Protecting the Family” section of its manifesto, it promised to establish an all-party committee to consider the implication of the recent European court ruling.
This would examine the issues “in a way that respects the range of sincerely held views on this matter”, the manifesto stated, while Enda Kenny avoided questions on it, saying it was a “sensitive issue”.
The subsequent Programme for Government agreed to set up an expert group of medical and legal experts to examine the issue and report by July. Fears by some Labour TDs that this was an exercise in once again avoiding action on the X case ruling came to pass, when the group sought an extension until the end of September before publishing its findings.
During a Dáil debate in April, James Reilly, the health minister, said six successive governments had shied away from the issue but that this Government would not be the seventh.
Sources from both parties privately said that, by the end of this year, the question of abortion will probably go back to its normal state of being ignored, and that this government will continue the long tradition of doing nothing about it.
Fine Gael has already had a chance to discuss it at their last parliamentary party meeting before the summer break. A group of at least its 15 TDs and senators to oppose any liberalisation of the laws.
There is a perception that Labour is in agreement on the issue, but one member of the party said this is not the case. “Many members of the Labour parliamentary party would share some of the apprehensions and anxieties that were manifest in the Fine Gael meeting last week,” he said.
The issue is expected to be debated at the party’s annual “think-in” in Maynooth this September.
“There are elements who have a more aggressive liberal agenda or radical feminist perspective who would like to take this opportunity to legalise beyond the X case implications and that is the concern,” he said.
Once the expert group reports in the autumn, the Government will have a number of options:
* It can pass legislation in the Oireachtas to give effect to the X case ruling and risk losing a number of Government TDs in the process;
* It can hold a referendum and risk causing irreparable damage to the Coalition;
* It can continue to ignore the issue and hope other matters take over.
The Government is likely to stick with the “British solution”, and thousands of women will travel each year to terminate pregnancies.
The X case ruling will continue to languish and abortion in Ireland will retain its confusing, unique, and hypocritical position of being a right that isn’t granted.
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