What will Ireland's new abortion law look like, and how does it compare?
Harriet Sherwood
The eighth amendment – article 40.3.3 of the Irish constitution – will be replaced with a clause stating: “Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy.”
The Irish government is planning to bring legislation before the Dáil providing for abortion on request up to the 12th week of pregnancy with a three-day “cooling-off” period before abortion medication is administered.
Between 12 and 24 weeks, abortion will only be available in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, a risk to a woman’s life or a risk of serious harm to the health of the mother. After 24 weeks, termination will be possible in cases of fatal foetal abnormality.
There will be provision for conscientious objection among medical practitioners, although doctors will be obliged to transfer care of the pregnant woman to another doctor.
How does this compare to elsewhere?
Most European countries allow abortion on request up to 12 weeks. Iceland permits it up to 16 weeks, Sweden 18 weeks and the Netherlands 22 weeks.
Abortion is banned in all circumstances in Malta, and in Poland and Cyprus it is only permitted in cases of grave risk to the health of the mother, fatal foetal abnormality, rape and incest.
In the UK, abortions can be carried out up to 24 weeks with the agreement of two doctors. Abortions after 24 weeks are allowed only if the woman’s life is at risk or the child would be born with a severe abnormality.
The conservative government of Poland, which already has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe, has proposed tightening it further by banning abortion in cases of severe foetal disorders, including Down’s syndrome.
Several US states are also tightening access to abortion. Abortion is completely prohibited in El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and highly restricted in many other South American countries.
The projected yes victory looks like a foregone conclusion if social media mentions are anything to go by.
The online data analysts Meltwater crunched two days’ of social media conversations around the world on Thursday and Friday – the day of the referendum – and found the Repealthe8th hashtag was 11 times more popular than the no hashtag:
#RepealThe8th/#Repeal8th – total number of mentions: 335,373
The international organisation that sponsored two Irish women who sued the government at the UN over being forced to have abortions abroad said the projected yes victory would give hope to women across the world today.
The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which backed – among others – Amanda Mellet’s complaint to the UN, said the expected yes vote “would reverberate globally for years to come”. Leah Hoctor, the regional director for Europe at the CRR, said:
If the referendum passes it will mark a historic moment for the women of Ireland. Irish laws on abortion have long been among the most restrictive in the world and wholly out of step with legislation in almost every other European country … Women living in counties with highly restrictive abortion laws would have cause for hope that significant change can be achieved.
Save the 8th, which led the no campaign, has effectively conceded defeat, saying in a statement on its website that Irish voters have perpetrated “a tragedy of historic proportions”.
The 8th amendment did not create a right to life for the unborn child – it merely acknowledged that such a right exists, has always existed, and will always exist.
What Irish voters did yesterday is a tragedy of historic proportions. However, a wrong does not become right simply because a majority support it.
We are so proud of all of those who stood with us in this campaign: our supporters, our donors, our families and our loved ones. This campaign took a huge personal toll on all of us who were involved, and we have been so grateful for their support.
The unborn child no longer has a right to life recognised by the Irish state. Shortly, legislation will be introduced that will allow babies to be killed in our country. We will oppose that legislation. If and when abortion clinics are opened in Ireland, because of the inability of the government to keep their promise about a GP-led service, we will oppose that as well. Every time an unborn child has his or her life ended in Ireland, we will oppose that, and make our voices known.
Abortion was wrong yesterday. It remains wrong today. The constitution has changed, but the facts have not.
More pressure is being placed on Northern Ireland over its restrictive abortion law from Clare Murphy, the external affairs director at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.
Ireland’s voters have shown that denying women the right to abortion services in their own country in 2018 is not acceptable, she said.
This is a momentous step forward that is long overdue. For decades, Irish women have been forced to travel hundreds of miles to our clinics in England, often alone, at a huge personal and emotional cost.
The result, once confirmed, means that the Irish government can bring an end to this suffering, and legislate to provide the care women need at home. Now more than ever it is time for the UK government to show the same respect for the women of Northern Ireland.
The Guardian’s Lisa O’Carroll is watching the count in Roscommon, traditionally one of Ireland’s most conservative counties, and reports that even there, the yes campaign looks to be doing well.
Plenty of yes campaigners with their “repeal” jumpers here at Roscommon count. Early stages here but so far all tallies I’ve spoken to have recorded a lead to “yes” apart from one rural area. One of 7 Ros town boxes was 201 to 146: another 156 “yes” to 125 another 91 to 91 pic.twitter.com/nl1Zxo20yS
The Irish capital is expected to return one of the highest proportions of yes votes in the country. The Irish Times reports that with 23% of ballot boxes open in Dublin Bay South, 79% are for yes and 21% for no. Dublin Central has 46% of boxes open, with 76% in favour of repealing the eighth and 24% against.
The detail of the RTÉ exit poll shows Ireland has profoundly changed its attitudes towards women, with most voters saying they had made up their minds to repeal abortion laws years ago, reports Lisa O’Carroll.
It showed little gender difference in voting, with only one in 10 saying they were influenced by posters or religion, and more than 75% saying they had not changed their mind on abortion in the past five years – suggesting support for reform far predated the announcement of a referendum two months ago.
Colm O’Gorman, the head of Amnesty International in Ireland, which campaigned for a yes vote, said expectations had been that the count would be close, but attitude surveys it conducted in 2015 had shown deep changes in thinking on abortion.
More than 80% said they had not changed their minds on how they were going to vote during the campaign, and more than three-quarters said they were influenced by personal stories they had heard in the media, or from people they knew.
Eight percent said they were influenced by the death of Savita Halappanavar during complications in her pregnancy in Galway in 2015.
Last night’s Irish Times exit poll showed a whopping 87% of 18 to 24-year-olds supported a yes vote, reports Sinéad Baker.
The president of the Union of Students in Ireland, Michael Kerrigan, who represents more than 374,000 students, said:
We are delighted, but not at all surprised by the reported turnout of young people. We had predicted earlier in the week that this would be the largest youth vote in the history of the state, with a large majority voting yes. This is an issue that has been debated on campuses since the mid-1970s and has really intensified in the last couple of years. The exit poll suggests this issue was not as divisive as reported and that repeal was supported across generations.
The union has been pushing for repeal of the eighth amendment for years, and has been a constant presence at marches and demonstrations. It directly registered more than 25,000 students to vote in the run-up to the referendum.
The idea that Ireland is a conservative country seems to be melting away. When it comes to referendums on social issues, Ireland has not voted for the conservative option since 1983.
Over that time, both the rural/urban divide and the generation gap have slowly closed. When the country voted in favour of permitting divorce in 1995, it did so by 9,000 votes and only five constituencies outside Dublin voted in favour.
In the 2015 plebiscite on same-sex marriage, the rural/urban divide vanished, and cross-generational support was clear – and it looks like this is the case again in 2018.
The expected result in the Irish referendum is likely to put significant pressure on politicians in Northern Ireland to review its highly restrictive regime, reports Harriet Sherwood.
If the repeal of the eighth amendment is confirmed and followed by legislation to permit abortion on request up to the 12th week of pregnancy, Northern Ireland will be the only place in the UK and Ireland – and most of Europe – where terminations are outlawed except for the most exceptional circumstances.
UK politicians acknowledged that Northern Ireland would come under the spotlight as the exit polls landed. Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, who also holds the equalities brief, tweeted:
Based on the exit poll, a historic & great day for Ireland, & a hopeful one for Northern Ireland. That hope must be met. #HomeToVote stories are a powerful and moving testimony as to why this had to happen and that understanding & empathy exists between generations. #trustwomen
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