The report of the Citizens' Assembly on abortion has been laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas and politicians in Leinster House now face a choice. Do they frame a referendum which would permit the general availability of abortion along the lines of the assembly's recommendations, or do they offer the public a more restrictive regime?
The conclusion of the assembly’s business on the subject marks only the end of phase one of a five-phase process.
A special Oireachtas committee, chaired by Fine Gael senator Catherine Noone, will now consider the recommendations, beginning its work in the coming weeks. It will report before the end of the year on whether there should be a referendum and what it should ask.
Then the Government must decide what it will put before the Oireachtas, and whether it should draw up legislation governing abortion to be implemented after a referendum, so that voters would know what the post-referendum landscape would look like.
Phase four entails the Oireachtas passing legislation, if there is to be a referendum, and specifying the question that will be asked.
Finally, the people must vote in the referendum.
Few subjects polarise opinion as abortion does, and campaigners on both sides are not just totally convinced they are right, they are totally convinced they will win. The campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment has been growing in size and momentum over the past year, but as Saturday’s pro-life demonstration in Dublin will attest, the anti-abortion movement has also been prepared for this latest clash for years.
The many Dáil debates on the issue – in various guises – in recent years have revealed that there are more TDs committed to a complete liberalisation of abortion laws in Ireland than ever. But they remain in a minority.
Perhaps more importantly there are also many more TDs than ever before who favour a limited liberalisation of the law, allowing for abortion in cases such as rape, fatal foetal abnormality, and where a woman’s health (not just her life) is seriously threatened by the pregnancy.
But there is little sign that the Dáil as a whole favours the type of liberalisation of the law presented by the assembly recommendations.
Perhaps just as significantly, many TDs believe that such a broad extension of the availability of abortion would not have a chance of passing in a referendum. Their view is informed not just by the constant conversation that Irish politicians have with their constituents, but by successive opinion polls.
Cautious approach
Polls in The Irish Times have suggested that the public favours a much more a cautious and careful approach to the liberalisation of the laws on abortion than the assembly recommended. The most recent poll in late March, for example, which mirrored the questions asked in the final ballots of the assembly, found again that while there is overwhelming public support for Ireland's strict ban on abortion to be eased, that support stops a good deal short of endorsing a UK-style regime.
There were solid majorities for legalising abortion in cases of a serious physical or mental risk to the women’s health, in cases of rape, or a foetal abnormality that makes death likely.
But voters were split in cases of a foetal abnormality where death is not likely (36 per cent favour liberalisation, 47 per cent oppose it) and categorically against abortion for “socioeconomic reasons”.
Asked simply if abortion should be available on request,67 per cent said no.
Nonetheless, pro-choice campaigners want a referendum which would enable the assembly’s recommendations to be implemented. They believe that the assembly process shows that if people hold a lengthy, informed and calm discussion about abortion that they will come to a more liberal position on the issue. Perhaps they are right, though it may be unwise to extrapolate too much from the special circumstances of the assembly. In any case, there is no guarantee that a national referendum campaign would be either informed or calm, to put it mildly.
General access
On the other side, many anti-abortion campaigners also want a referendum, offering general access to abortion along the lines of the assembly recommendations. Why? Because they believe that, while a referendum offering limited abortion might pass, a proposal for complete liberalisation would not.
This is the view shared by many politicians in Leinster House.
So now they will have to decide whether to give both sets of campaigners what they want – or whether to leave aside the assembly’s recommendations and instead craft a proposition for more limited access to abortion that is both more in accordance with their own views, and that they think might pass. Dumping the assembly’s report would be politically difficult, to say the least – even if politicians believe that it would increase the chances of repealing the Eighth Amendment and reforming the law.
The path of least political resistance may be to give the campaigners what they want. It would mean a bitterly divisive referendum campaign. But that’s probably inevitable anyway.