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almost every country in the world, great moral issues like abortion
are decided either by the courts or by the legislature. Not in Ireland.
Here, the people got to vote on whether or not they wanted divorce
on two occasions, the first time in 1986 when we rejected it by
a landslide, the second time in 1995 when we accepted it by a margin
of 0.7 percent. On Wednesday we will go to the polls to decide what
our abortion law should be.
It was fear
of a Roe v. Wade-type decision by the courts in Ireland
which first led Irish pro-life campaigners to propose a referendum
which would given constitutional protection to the unborn. They
did not want to see unelected judges, accountable in their own minds
only to liberal opinion-formers, one day wiping out the right to
life. Nor did they have much faith in the legislature. Moral issues
rarely get debated at election time when bread-and-butter issues
normally dominate. Instead determined liberals tend to steamroller
their more passive conservative colleagues into submission during
mid-term and before you know it homosexuality or some such has been
decriminalized. (This is what happened in Ireland a few years ago.)
It is, of course,
fear of public opinion that makes liberals so fond of the courts
as a way of enacting their will when they fail to get their way
through the legislature. What is interesting about past Irish referenda
is that the liberal position almost always starts off way ahead,
probably because liberal arguments are all the electorate has been
exposed to through the media up to that point. But as the campaigns
get underway, and conservative voices manage to get heard, the gap
always narrows and on voting day the conservative view usually prevails.
I daresay the same would happen anywhere conservative arguments
get a fair hearing.
The Irish constitution
currently protects the life of the unborn and the life of the mother,
a clause which is the fruit of a 1983 referenda that passed by a
two-to-one margin.
In 1992, abortion
was back in the news in Ireland with the "X-case" A 14-year-old
girl was impregnated by a middle-aged man - he was subsequently
found guilty of unlawful carnal knowledge — and she was prevented
from traveling to England for an abortion. This caused international
uproar. The case found its way into the supreme court which, upon
hearing the testimony of a psychologist, judged that the girl was
suicidal, that this represented a threat to her life, and that under
the constitution she could therefore have an abortion. She wound
up miscarrying, but the judges had nonetheless legalized abortion
in Ireland on psychological grounds through their decision. The
main reason abortions have not to date taken place in Ireland is
because the Irish Medical Council will strike off their register
any doctor who does so. With the IMC progressively falling into
the hands of pro-choice doctors, this will change sooner rather
than later.
To head off
this possibility, Irish pro-lifers campaigned hard for a further
referendum that would rescind the effects of the X-case. This is
what we will decide on Wednesday.
It is of vital
importance for pro-life campaigners everywhere that it passes. If
it does not pass, pro-abortion forces in Ireland will have the initiative,
and eventually we will go the way of the rest of the Western world
and allow abortion-on-demand. Pro-life advocates internationally
will no longer have Ireland as an example of a country that offers
protection both to unborn children and their mothers. It is generally
not appreciated that Ireland has one of the lowest maternal death
rates in the world; this should go a long way toward proving that
abortion does not save women's lives. That's, of course, not what
the proponents of abortion-including, of course, the media —
have been telling voters.
Despite them,
the pro-life side is narrowly ahead. Much depends on Wednesday,
and not just in Ireland. Pray that the measure is passed and our
law becomes abortion-free once more.
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