How the vote went
On May 25 the Irish people went to the polls to vote, either to abolish the existing Article 8 of the constitution which protects the life of the unborn (Yes), or to retain that pro-life article (No). The very fact that the vote was framed to give the pro-life side the negative option reflects how from the very beginning and throughout the campaign the Irish government did much to ensure that they would get the result they wanted: the introduction of abortion into Ireland.
The result of the poll was a landslide 66% Yes in favour of the repeal of the prolife clause against a 34% No vote. The magnitude of the Yes victory took everyone by surprise. The Yes voters were dominant among the young: 87% of 18-24 year olds voted Yes and only the 65+ age bracket voted in the majority for No. More women than men voted in favour of abortion (72% as against 66%). Only one of the twenty-six counties in the country – Donegal – returned a majority No vote.
It was a shocking result, particularly when considered in the light of John Waters’ observation:
For the first time in history, an electorate has voted to deny the right to life of the unborn. The victims of this dreadful choice will be the most defenseless, those entirely without voice or words. This is the considered verdict of the Irish people, not – as elsewhere – an edict of the elites, imposed by parliamentary decree or judicial fiat (John Waters, First Things, May 28, 2018).
Why was the victory so resounding?
The leaders of all the main political parties enthusiastically backed the repeal campaign, in particular the leader of the ruling Fine Gael party. All the main media outlets were overtly or covertly in favour of the repeal campaign. Irish celebreties such as Bono, Saoirse Ronan, Liam Neeson and Cillian Murphy appeared on videos urging a Yes vote. The campaign was also supported by a large number of the intelligentsia of the country (insofar as Ireland can be said to have an intelligentsia since political correctness thoroughly dominates public debate and perhaps even private thought). With two weeks to go Facebook banned all foreign adverts on the vote while Google banned adverts from all sources – a step clearly designed to favour the Yes side given that they had all the other communications media in the country virtually sewn up.
The No campaign was fighting a losing battle from the outset, pitted as they were against all the forces of what is essentially Ireland’s new and unassailable liberal establishment. They fought a brave and highly professional campaign despite this, and despite the regular destruction of their street posters and the undisguised animus against them in radio and TV interviews and debates.
Given that 43% of voters were influenced by personal stories in the media, the Yes campaign’s use of the hard-cases was key: women whose unborn suffered from life limiting conditions (the so-called “fatal foetal abnormalities”); women who experienced great hardship in travelling to the UK for abortions; and in particular the tragic case of Savita Halappanavar: an Indian woman who died tragically in an Irish hospital in 2012 because of a five days’ delay by the hospital in diagnosing fatal sepsis, but whose death was presented as a consequence of Ireland’s ban on abortion. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that for some a Yes vote was used as a vote against the Catholic Church. Much of the post-Referendum jubilation is peppered with observations about the demise of the Church in Ireland.
What is the next step in the legalisation of abortion?
The Irish Government will shortly bring forward proposed legislation to the Dáil (the Irish parliament), but until this is passed the current law remains in place. The Government’s proposed legislation will make abortions accessible within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy without restriction. It is also foreseen – despite denials to the contrary – that abortion will be legalised on the grounds of disability, and perhaps beyond the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. It is hard to see how it could be otherwise given that the the Yes campaign was built on arguments which justify abortion up till birth: the issue of personal choice (for 62% of the votes the “right to choose” was the most significant issue in the campaign), of “trusting women”, and of not “policing” women’s bodies.
The Irish result has already lead to calls for the abolition of Northern Ireland’s pro-life law with politicians coming under pressure to introduce abortion there.
What is the significance of this vote for Ireland?
Una Mulally a pro-choice journalist with the Irish Times makes this summation of the significance of the vote:
The handover period is over. The fiction of Ireland as a conservative, dogmatically Catholic country has been shattered. The past is left back there, and a new legacy is being created. A legacy of compassion, empathy, and maturity – a country taking responsibility for the care and health of women and girls. What happened in the referendum vote was seismic, but more seismic still was the realisation that this vote was reflecting change, not just instigating it (Irish Times, May 28, 2018).
While her optimism about the treatment of women in Ireland appears to be slightly naive (for example during the very week of the Referendum two bizarre and brutal murders of young women occurred in Dublin), she is quite right to say that the fiction of a Catholic Ireland is over. Coming hot on the heels of the nation’s choice to legalise homosexual marriage in a referendum in 2015, this landslide vote in favour of abortion confirms the fact that “Catholic Ireland” is now a thing of the past.
The Irish Catholicism of post-independence Ireland was marked by a naive and uncritical docility to the hierarchy and little commitment to, or perhaps trust in, the more intellectual side of the Faith. Ironically the same naive and uncritical docility is now at work in post-Catholic Ireland, but directed to our new masters. This is a bit worrying. It appears that the censorious intolerance that marked areas of life in Catholic Ireland has now found its Doppelganger in the Irish media. Already there are suggestions coming from the victorious Yes side that their opponents should now no longer have a public platform; they were, in the words of Una Mullaly, “fringe fundamentalists” who should not have “gained such a platform and unfettered access to the media”. It does not appear unlikely that there will be more organised, perhaps legal measures, to limit the remaining dissident voices in Irish society. And given the resounding defeat for the small voice of dissent which was the No campaign, it would not be alarmist to say that Ireland will probably soon introduce other liberal laws including the legalisation of euthanasia.
Where does this leave the Catholic Church?
Ireland is in the anomalous situation of fast becoming the world’s most liberal society while at the same time maintaining the trappings of cultural Catholicism. Groups of schoolgirls will happily wear Yes stickers on their school-uniforms emblazoned with mottos such as Cruci dum spiro fido (“As long as I breathe I trust in the Cross”); parents will bring their children to make their First Holy Communion on Saturday and then skip Mass the following day; politicians who have high profile roles in campaigning for abortion will at the same time have high profile roles in the celebration of the sacraments in the local parish Church. There is a growing awareness that this anomaly must stop; that the Church must make a clean break with cultural Catholicism – for the good of all concerned. Faithful Catholics are saying that the Church must downsize to adapt to the current reality of a post-Christian secularised Ireland. The “fiction” of a Catholic Ireland which Una Mullaly speaks of has indeed been shattered, and the Church here needs to take cognisance of this. It will of course take courage to end the sham which is cultural Catholicism – already Bishop Phonsie Cullinan of Waterford had to endure criticism for insisting that in his diocese sponsors in Confirmation ceremonies be Catholics in good standing. John Halligan, a government minister, campaigner for abortion and self-declared atheist decried his exclusion as confirmation sponsor as petty pro-life tactics.
Given how deformative of consciences such cultural Catholicism must be both for faithful Catholics as well as for lapsed Catholics, the task of re-evangelising Ireland cannot begin to take place while these self-deceptive practices are so firmly established in Irish life. This may yet be the one significant blessing to come from the Referendum. In this way, the tragic vote of May 25 is also an opportunity for the Church in Ireland to clarify in her own mind and praxis her relationship with Irish society. Joseph Ratzinger’s words from a 1969 radio lecture, accurately sum up the painful, but ultimately positive, position that the Irish Church now finds herself in:
From today’s crisis, a Church will emerge tomorrow that will have lost a great deal. She will be small and, to a large extent, will have to start from the beginning. She will no longer be able to fill many of the buildings created in her period of great splendor. Because of the smaller number of her followers, she will lose many of her privileges in society. Contrary to what has happened until now, she will present herself much more as a community of volunteers As a small community, she will demand much more from the initiative of each of her members and she will certainly also acknowledge new forms of ministry and will raise up to the priesthood proven Christians who have other jobs There will be an interiorized Church, which neither takes advantage of its political mandate nor flirts with the left or the right. This will be achieved with effort because the process of crystallization and clarification will demand great exertion. It will make her poor and a Church of the little people. All this will require time. The process will be slow and painful.