After much urging to announce both date and format regarding a referendum on the Eighth Amendment, Leo Varadkar’s government has finally done so.
Article by Rónán Duffy in The Journal on January 30, 2018
‘‘We’re asking people to trust women’: Repeal referendum to be held before the end of May‘
“We know that thousands of Irish women, women from every single county in Ireland, travel abroad for abortions every year. We know that women obtain abortion pills through the post to end their pregnancies without any medical support or counselling or supervision. So we already have abortion in Ireland, but it’s unsafe, unregulated and unlawful. In my opinion we cannot continue to export our problems and import our solutions,”
After much waiting, we have finally heard from the Irish Government on the issue of the Eighth Amendment, and for the most part it was the news we wanted to hear. The referendum is to be held at the end of May, and for the most part, the vote is to be on a straight repeal.
It is natural for Pro-Choice campaigners to remain sceptical, however.
First, I have questions on this intervention by the Attorney General on the need to have wording left in the Constitution which allows the Oireachtas to legislate. Why wasn’t this information given to both the Citizens’ Assembly and the Oireachtas Committee? Or, if it was, then why are we choosing to ignore their findings?
And second, this quote from Duffy’s article concerns me…
Speaking at Government Buildings this evening about his own views on the referendum, Varadkar said that he would be campaigning to repeal the Eighth Amendment.
Given that Micheal Martin of Fianna Fail has managed to contort his own position into something similar to the Taoiseach of late, I sincerely hope that the Irish mainstream media does not consider the two ‘Civil War party’ leaders to be the foremost spokespeople of the Yes campaign between now and the referendum.
They are both leaders of political organisations that have been given free votes to their parliamentarians so we would hope that parties with stated positions on Repeal, as well as other organisations, will be given sufficient time to present their case when the debate takes place in the public domain.
All of that remains to be seen, but for now, this can only be seen as a positive step. JLP
#IANWAE
First Person Plural 