Fine Gael has accused the Government of injecting hysteria into the abortion debate, claiming it felt it would lose if it conducted the campaign calmly and rationally.
Launching his party's campaign for a No vote, the party leader, Mr Michael Noonan, said he was strongly urging rejection of the proposed constitutional amendment. His party would be spending €100,000 on the campaign, which would involve posters, leaflets, and public appearances by party figures.
Mr Noonan announced he was appointing Mrs Nora Owen as director of the campaign.
He said there were different views in his party on abortion, but the majority was opposed to the Government's referendum from a liberal position. The party's campaign slogan "Don't Make Women's Lives Worth Less" reflected this.
Mr Noonan said he believed the Government had now decided "that a calm rational debate will not get them the result they want, so they are deliberately introducing a note of hysteria into the campaign and they are raising fears to try and stampede the electorate into voting Yes." It was his experience in Gaelic football that "the crowd that's losing starts the fight", and the Government was doing so on this occasion.
He said the Taoiseach had spoken of floodgates being opened, and this had been followed by "Frank Fahey's extraordinary remarks" in the Dáil. The implication of Mr Fahey's comments and tone were that women were making spurious claims that they were suicidal in attempts to obtain abortions in Ireland, he said.
He maintained the Taoiseach's tactic was "to dumb down the debate so that people will vote in an ill-informed fashion. It's a deliberate dumbing down". He said the Government was now going to designate a limited number of hospitals where terminations of pregnancy could be carried out where a woman's life was in danger. This was limiting the current situation where such procedures were carried out whenever a woman's life was in danger. There would also now be a requirement to keep records of these procedures. "This will clearly involve giving the name, address, marital status and age" of anybody requiring such a procedure, unlike in the past."
A further reason to vote No was the uncertainty over how the Supreme Court would interpret the amendment. "It is clear that the Constitution is treated as an organic document that grows and develops as time goes by," he said, and it was impossible to predict what would happen to the seven section Bill that would be given constitutional protection.
"Finally, the referendum will not make one iota of difference to all those women who go to the UK for abortions," he said.
Mrs Owen contradicted the claim, made earlier at the Government press conference by the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, that a health board could facilitate a girl in circumstances similar to the C case to travel to the UK for an abortion.
She said the courts had only allowed her travel as she was intending to do something that was legal in Ireland as a result of the X case: To have an abortion because she was suicidal.
Removing this ground for abortion would debar a health board from facilitating an abortion abroad, she said.