Anyone who cares about women’s and girls’ rights should be deeply concerned about what happened at the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution last week.
It was puzzling to see so many of them hailing the committee’s vote on Wednesday evening “not to retain the Eighth Amendment in full” as “historic”, “significant” and “the right thing to do”.
Even Amnesty International, which has been to the fore in campaigning for repeal of the Eighth Amendment, was happy with the crumbs from the committee’s table, describing the vote as “an important first step” adding, however, that the amendment “must be fully repealed”.
The 1983 Eighth Amendment, as we know too painfully, inserted into the Constitution article 40.3.3 which guarantees to protect as a far as practicable the “equal right to life” of the mother and unborn. We know the inhumane cruelty this been has inflicted on hundreds of thousands of women and girls in the intervening 34 years. We know how “equal” it rendered the lives of Savita Halappanavar and her unborn child – they both died.
So, if a referendum on repealing the Eighth is what we are looking for, even expecting, what on Earth was the committee doing voting only for a partial repeal? We can look to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to answer that.
Grubby compromise
It was a grubby compromise, tabled by Sinn Féin and supported by Fianna Fáil’s health spokesman Billy Kelleher. Though Sinn Féin came in for criticism from many pro-choice campaigners for such a weak motion, had it not been for it the two ‘Government’ parties would have succeeded in cynically undermining the committee’s work in their determination that only the most restrictive abortion legislation would be its outcome.
When the committee was drawing up its plan of work in July, it agreed there would be three modules, with decisions taken at the end of each. The first module, on the Constitution, was logically to have a vote on whether to recommend repealing the Eighth.
The cynicism of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is breathtaking. If the legislation looks like it will be too liberal for their liking, they can pull the plug on a referendum on repeal
At least eight of the committee’s 22 members tabled motions calling for a straight repeal of the Eighth Amendment, in full. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, however, argued a vote on repeal should not be taken until the second module, looking at legislative option, had been completed.
The cynicism of their actions is breathtaking. It is clear now they plan to push for extremely restrictive legislation in the second module, knowing they can use their votes on the referendum question as their aces. If the legislation looks like it will be too liberal for their liking, they can pull the plug on a referendum on repeal.
The compromise motion – neither repeal nor retain – keeps the show on the road, but it’s largely meaningless. Worse, it could mean almost no change at all.
It could mean the vast majority of women and girls who need to end their pregnancy would still have to travel to Britain or the Netherlands, if they could afford to, or import pills to self-administer terminations at home. Watch, sisters, in the coming sessions of the committee as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael members manoeuvre and horse-trade over our bodies, our physical health, our emotional wellbeing, our ability to keep a child financially, our education chances, our job prospects – our lives.
Optimistic mood
There’s a buoyant, optimistic, even excited mood out there, particularly among young women, about a coming referendum and that it will mean repealing the Eighth.
Watching the depressing, enraging turn of events at the Oireachtas committee last week must serve a wake-up call that nothing in this struggle can be taken for granted. While 10 women and girls leave the country to have abortions this week, and five take abortion pills at home, Civil War politicians are scheming to ensure as little change as possible.
Saturday, at 1.09 am will mark the exact time five years on that Savita Halappanavar lost her life to the Eighth Amendment. She had presented seven days earlier, at a modern Irish hospital, with back pain, in the 17th week of her much-wanted pregnancy. She was told she was miscarrying. The foetus was not viable. In agonising pain and distress she asked several times for a termination. She was refused because the foetal heartbeat remained.
She delivered a dead female foetus on Wednesday, October 24th, 2012, by which stage she had contracted sepsis which escalated rapidly to severe sepsis and then septic shock. Four days after she delivered the stillborn girl, she too was dead.
Across the State this Saturday, thousands will gather at vigils to mark the fifth anniversary of her death, to say #neveragain.
Vigils and remembering are important. As important, however, and more urgent, is political pressure on the committee: stop playing politics with our lives. For Savita, for us, vote again this week. To repeal the Eighth. In full.
Kitty Holland is Social Affairs Correspondent