On the campaign trail: A veteran of referendum campaigns in Waterford where confusion has replaced verbal abuse, is accompanied by Chris Dooley
She has been personally abused, called a murderer and chased by dogs, but Mary Leahy doesn't shirk from a challenge.
A veteran of two previous abortion and two divorce referendum campaigns, Ms Leahy knew she would be taking to the road again when the Government announced that another referendum would take place in March.
Yesterday, as she and colleagues from the Alliance For A No Vote group distributed leaflets in John Roberts Square, Waterford, the sheer cleanliness of the place told a lot about how attitudes have changed since the first abortion referendum in 1983.
Nearly an hour after the campaigners' arrival in the square, there wasn't a speck of litter in sight. "In the past, there would be leaflets thrown everywhere. We'd be running after them. Some people would make a point of scrunching them up and throwing them away in front of you."
This time, she says, people are confused about the issues and are glad to be getting information. "There is a big change. In the past people would be slightly ashamed even to talk to you, but now they're saying 'we want to know what this is all about'."
It was very different almost two decades ago when Ms Leahy, who with her husband runs a garden nursery business in Piltown, Co Kilkenny, campaigned against the first constitutional amendment on abortion.
One particular incident, when anti-amendment campaigners from Waterford city joined a group from Piltown in canvassing the farmers attending the Iverk agricultural show, attracted national newspaper attention. "They couldn't believe we had the neck to do it," she says.
"We had a big red van and we parked that in front of the entrance at six o'clock in the morning. And everybody who went in or out of that gate was offered a leaflet. We got abused and threatened, and somebody tried to get us moved on, but it didn't work." Even then, the reaction wasn't all bad, however. "A few old men actually came up and said: 'Thanks for being here, because all we're getting is what the priests are saying'." That, though, was the exception rather than the rule during that campaign.
"We did get a lot of abuse . . . I remember at one stage a dog being set on me. I was able to run well then," she says, laughing at the memory.
In 1992, when she took part in a sit-down protest in Waterford city centre over the decision not to allow the girl at the centre of the X case to leave Ireland for an abortion, a woman stopped and repeatedly called them "murderers".
"I remember that particular woman but she was not the only one. The word 'murderer' was used a lot but you never hear it now." During this campaign, she has received nothing worse than the occasional dirty look.
For Ms Leahy, who is not involved in any political group, the proposed amendment should be opposed in the first instance to prevent a rowing back on the X case judgment. Her own mother died when she was a baby, and she has strong personal feelings about the 1983 amendment.
"I cannot conceive how anyone can suggest that the mother's right to life is only equal to that of an unborn child. The mother's life is paramount." Those who campaigned for the first amendment, she believes, "scored an own-goal" because, rather than securing the legal position on abortion, that and successive referendums had opened the subject to debate and made people aware that the issue was a complex one.
"Things were very black and white in the past and I think people had very naive attitudes. People are much more aware now and much more knowledgeable because they've been talking about abortion and debating it for 18 years."