Ireland Votes To Overturn Abortion Ban, 'Culmination Of A Quiet Revolution
The Irish have swept aside one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the developed world in a landslide vote that reflects Ireland's emergence as a socially liberal country no longer obedient to Catholic dictates.
With all ballots counted and turnout at a near historic high, election officials reported Saturday that 66.4 percent voted to overturn Ireland's abortion prohibition and 33.6 percent opposed the measure.
The outcome of the referendum Friday May 25,2018 was a decisive win for the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution. The 1983 amendment enshrined an "equal right to life" for mothers and "the unborn" and outlawed almost all abortions - even in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormality or non-life-threatening risk to maternal health.
"What we have seen today is a culmination of a quiet revolution that has been taking place in Ireland for the past 10 or 20 years," Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said
The turnout was 64.1 percent - the third highest for a referendum vote since the adoption of the constitution in 1937 and decision to join the European Economic Community in 1972. By comparison, turnout was just over 60 percent when Ireland voted to legalize same-sex marriage in 2015.
Ireland's political leadership promised that Parliament will quickly pass a new law guaranteeing unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks and beyond that in cases of fatal fetal abnormalities or serious risks to a mother's health. That would bring Ireland's access to abortion in line with the other 27 members of the European Union.
In Ireland, seeking or providing an abortion has been punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Since 2013, there has been an exception for when a mother's life is at risk.
Varadkar, who is gay and whose right to marry was only accepted in Ireland three years ago, called the vote a turning point. "It's also a day when we say no more," the Irish prime minister said. "No more to doctors telling their patients there's nothing can be done for them in their own country, no more lonely journeys across the Irish Sea, no more stigma as the veil of secrecy is lifted and no more isolation as the burden of shame is gone."
Simon Harris, Ireland's minister of health, said a bill would be written this summer and passed by year's end. "The people of Ireland have told us to get on with it," he said.
Note
Although Ireland bans abortion, it does not restrict travel for it. Researchers estimate that about 3,500 women make the trip to Britain each year and that another 2,000 end their pregnancies with pills they buy over the Internet and smuggle into Ireland.
A central figure in Ireland's abortion debate has been Amanda Mellet. In 2011, Mellet was forced to choose between carrying a dying fetus to term in Ireland or to travel abroad for an abortion.
In June 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Committee found Ireland subjected Mellet to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, while also violating her right to privacy. The U.N. decision required Ireland, for the first time, to compensate a woman for the expenses and emotional distress tied to an abortion.
Social change in Ireland has been profound. In the 1990s, homosexual activity was criminal here. Divorce was forbidden. It was still difficult to buy a condom, the sale of which was outlawed until 1985. Within a generation, all of that has changed. In 2015, the majority-Catholic nation of about 4.8 million people was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by referendum.
The abortion campaign had gathered steam after an Indian-origin woman died in 2012 after her requests to terminate a 17-week pregnancy were denied by the Catholic country. Savita Halappanavar has now become the face of the campaign in Ireland.
Ms Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian-origin dentist, had sought a pregnancy termination when told she was miscarrying, but the request was turned down due to Ireland's then strict anti-abortion laws. She died of blood poisoning days after miscarrying in October 2012
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