It’s time to settle this huge issue - Abortion in Ireland

NO other issue is as divisive in Ireland today as abortion. Those opposed to it regard it a kind of State-sanctioned murder, an affront to the great, sanctified gift of life.

Others, those who wish to see it normalised, regard it as a health issue and believe that the service should be readily available to support women’s rights.

Compromise hardly seems likely or even possible.

Generations of politicians have fudged the issue, and though this evasion shows a certain lack of courage and leadership, it is not hard to understand why the issue is so often, as it is now, long-fingered. Any politician who hopes to be re-elected understands that no matter what happens, no matter how the issue is resolved, there will be a rump of discontented voters counting the days until they can exact revenge at the polling booth.

Despite this reticence, the statistics that tell us how our world actually is, rather than how we might wish it to be, show that abortion is a reality in Ireland, that there is a shocking level of sexual violence in our society, and that, according to a report published yesterday by human rights organisation Amnesty International, our abortion legislation “violates the human rights of women and girls”.

The Amnesty report also called for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment and said that despite the enactment of the Protection of Life in Pregnancy Act last year Ireland does not meet international human rights obligations, and that the rights of women and girls here to life, health, equality, non-discrimination, privacy, and information are not supported by legislation.

This, of course, is one view, just one side of the argument, and a position that would be viscerally rejected by those who oppose abortion.

However, statistics detailing 18,000 calls to the Rape Crisis service helpline last year — nearly 50 every day; the fact that the 3,700 Irish residents travelled to the UK last year for abortions may represent a fraction of those who made that journey to Britain or elsewhere; the unnecessary death of Savita Halappanavar; or the appalling case of the young migrant pregnant through rape who was so spectacularly failed by the Protection of Life in Pregnancy Act before the ink was dry on the legislation all point to an unavoidable obligation to resolve the issue one way or the other.

Those opposed to abortion argue that this is the safest county in the world to be an expectant mother but if that is really the case, then it is an achievement built on hypocrisy and a morality that is, at best, selective.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said the issue will not be revisited in the life of this Dáil. So be it, but each party that hopes to win seats in the next Dáil, and the myriad independents putting their name forward, should clearly and unambiguously state their position on abortion and then, almost immediately on the election of the next Dáil, set a date for a simple yes or no referendum. Tragically, that is as remote a possibility as the hope that that British abortion clinics will record a fall in the number of Irish clients in 2015.

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