Aborting Abortion
Ireland heads to the polls.

By David Quinn, columnist with The Sunday Times (Ireland edition)
March 5, 2002 9:30 a.m.

n 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.