Citizen’s Assembly an ideal way to take heat out of abortion issue

THE best way for us to sort the issue of abortion in Ireland is to take politicians out of the decision making process.

Something must be done about abortion as soon as possible, but in the absence of such speed, owing to the lack of political appetite, the least we can do is prepare the ground for the next Government to deal with it as soon as it is elected.

It appears contradictory, I know, to suggest excluding political influence, and then talk about the next Government handling the contentious issue. But how this could happen is that the Fine Gael/Labour government could quickly establish a Citizen’s Assembly who would, after discussion and investigation, decide on what’s best to do. Then the next Government would hold the necessary referendum early in its term of office, with the main political parties having committed to doing so during the general election campaign.

It seems a cliché to put forward the notion that in this instance it is the people who should decide, but the politicians have left us down time and again and now they need to be circumvented.

In some ways their behaviour can be excused (a little) when you consider the intensity of the pressure they are placed under when the abortion issue rears up. Our political system, and it’s clientalist nature, makes them particularly vulnerable. Not to mention the previously powerful role of the Catholic Church.

What is far less understandable is how, in more recent years, the issue has been allowed to drift on and on. We know now that we will, at regular intervals, be told that some other poor woman who wanted an abortion has died of sepsis; or of the heartbreak of a woman carrying a baby with a fatal foetal abnormality who has to travel to the UK for a termination; or a woman who, like last week, has been raped and is suicidal and wants an abortion, but instead gets an early caesarian.

To establish a Citizen’s Assembly, a non partisan gathering, would be a good thing. This would be seriously grown up politics. The recent Convention on the Constitution is a great example of this progress. Let’s face it though when this was first proposed there were general eye rolls about how ineffective it was likely to end up. But the cynics were proven wrong.

Labour senator Ivana Bacik has proposed the reconvening of the Constitutional Convention to discuss the abortion issue, and it’s easy to see her logic given how well it did. It also gained traction in political circles because the political representatives that attended the various sessions reported back to colleagues how well it was working, and how “ordinary” people were interacting with it so well.

But in this instance I’d lean more towards the Citizen’s Assembly idea, without the involvement of politicians. That way there would be no danger of political partisanship entering the equation. The debate last year, in the run up to the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill, was marked by the fact that so many of those in Leinster House seemed so far behind what became termed the “middle ground” of people, who believed there should be abortion available in Ireland in certain defined circumstances.

I may be wrong but perhaps the politicians would welcome a process where they would not be targeted, like piggy in the middle, by one side or the other in the debate. This, I believe, would be what might make it work. It would give an excellent opportunity for an issue that has bitterly divided our society to be thrashed out in a more mature way, and hopefully a resolution finally found.

The joint Committee on the Constitition, which examined our electoral system and reported in 2010, recommended the establishment of such an assembly to examine how we might change the way we vote. It stated that an assembly would de-politicise any reform process, as it hopefully would now with abortion. It pointed out that an assembly here could draw upon the experiences of similar bodies in the Netherlands and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.

Most importantly of all, said the report, those citizen assemblies undertook an extensive process of consultation with randomly chosen ordinary citizens on the issue they were concerned with — electoral reform. The way they went about that was to hold public meetings, public hearings, set piece debates and through websites to fully engage the public in the work that was being undertaken.

A chairperson was appointed who did not take an active agenda setting role and did not have any expertise or identity with electoral systems, making them as impartial as possible.

Just imagine how such an inclusive process, and its recommendations would enhance the legitimacy of any proposed reform. Decisions could be taken by seeking consensus instead of having to have an adversarial majority vote. Of course by de-politicising it in this way we would be without our traditional comfort blanket of blame for “that crowd above in Dublin taking decisions we don’t like”.What happened in the British Columbia experience was that in 2001 the Liberal Party proposed to consider alternatives to the first past the post voting system. They decided on the Assembly route, and as a result 160 citizens were drawn from all the different regions and they were chosen for gender balance. There was a rule that there had to be two citizens from each of the districts, one man and one woman.

They were addressed by experts, held public hearings and had serious deliberations. This information was delivered in a neutral, objective and unbiased fashion and the information sessions were held at weekends. Formal lectures, small-group meetings, quizzes and provision of reading material were used to provide members with the information they required.

Subsequently they issued their recommendation and it was to use the Irish system, a single transferable vote, with their own slight modification. It went to a referendum (without Government interference) in 2005 and was narrowly defeated.

David Farrell, Professor of Politics at UCD, was the research director of the Constitutional Convention. He thought it was a great success, but would go for the Citizen’s Assembly option to deal with the contentious abortion issue, minus politicians. He felt the Constitutional Convention performed best with the emotive, value laden issues such as marriage equality, blasphemy and the “women in the home” clause, and this would work very well with an Assembly discussing abortion.

He says it is pretty clear that that the mainstream Irish parties “don’t want to touch” the abortion issue at present so this would be a way of making progress, and taking the heat out of it.

Ahead of the next general election, which must be held by February 2016, the main parties can give a commitment that they would go ahead with a referendum, and whatever else might be proposed by the Citizen’s Assembly.

Why don’t we give it a try?