Profile: Having failed to get elected, some politicians might pursue vote-grabbing causes. But Ivana Bacik threw her weight behind the unpopular pro-choice cause, writes Paul Cullen
Three women who later became active in politics have held the position of Reid professor of criminal law in Trinity College Dublin. Two of them, famously, were called Mary, held non-conformist views in their early years but were drawn to the mainstream and elected president of Ireland.
The other is Ivana Bacik.
It could be a heavy mantle to carry, this lineage steeped in intellect, ambition and success, but the 36-year-old barrister, politician and academic bears it lightly. "I'm sure she'd love to be president of Ireland," remarks a friend. "She's intensely ambitious, she's a born politician, and she has those essential skills of energy and an ability to make people feel valued."
Robinson's road to the Áras was paved with then unpopular causes she championed as a liberal lawyer back in the 1970s and 1980s. McAleese, in her own way, defied prevailing opinion on the North and homosexual law reform. With time, Irish society updated itself to embrace the stances taken by both women, who were willingly co-opted by the establishment from which they once stood back.
Now Bacik, with her role as spokesperson for a new campaign to have abortion legalised in Ireland, seeks to tread a similar path. Just as Robinson trekked to the courts in support of the rights of women, the illegitimate and homosexuals, Bacik is hoping to use the battering ram of the European courts to open the door to abortion in Ireland.
Where Robinson brought test cases on behalf of Josie Airey and others, Bacik and the Safe and Legal in Ireland campaign have lodged papers with the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of three unidentified women who have had abortions overseas.
Abortion was the issue that first brought Bacik to prominence, when as a 21-year-old in 1989 she and other student union leaders were the target of legal action taken by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children to prevent the circulation of abortion information.
While Spuc claimed victory in the case, it amounted to a pyrrhic victory, as the row had prompted the passing of a referendum permitting abortion information in 1992.
The move from campaigning for abortion information to campaigning for abortion itself might seem a small one, but it could still prove a step too far for the electorate. Even left-wing politicians, mindful of the depths to which previous debates sank, have been slow to sign up for abortion rights so far in the 21st century. Previous campaigns in which Bacik has been involved, by the Dublin Abortion Rights Group and later Abortion Reform, got nowhere.
Irish mores have certainly changed since the right to life referendums, while the flow of Irish women to Britain seeking abortions has continued to increase - 6,217 in 2004 alone.
Internationally, though, some countries where abortion is legal have tightened up their laws - in particular to limit early terminations - and there is still little evidence of a groundswell here calling for a liberalisation of our laws.
"Irish people aren't ready for abortion yet, not at home anyway, and they certainly don't want a replay of the rows we had during the pro-life referendums," says one politician.
Bacik polled a respectable 40,000 votes in last year's European elections in Dublin, ahead of Patricia McKenna and Royston Brady. A quintessential metropolitan liberal, she pulled in support ranging from the PD's Fiona O'Malley to a drag artist friend named Panti. "Kiss with your eyes closed; Vote with your eyes open," pleaded one of her polling cards, which was widely distributed in nightclubs and bars around town.
HOWEVER, STRONG SUPPORT among young, liberal urbanites failed to compensate for her lack of appeal to the more traditional voter, and it was her more experienced and austere colleague Proinsias De Rossa who took the Labour seat.
Now, as she searches for a party nomination for the next election, her championing of abortion rights may have the effect of reinforcing her sectional appeal.
Opponents pooh-pooh the parallels she drew this week between abortion rights and David Norris's 1988 case, which resulted in the decriminalisation of homosexuality.
"That point doesn't stand up. Up to then, Irish law on homosexuality was punitive, nasty and rhetorical," says one pro-life lawyer. "It was a blot on the statute book and support for the policy was weakening deeply. That isn't the case in relation to abortion."
It may take years for the three women's cases to come to the European Court of Human Rights, but Bacik is in for the long run. Even then, the prospects for success look poor, according to one lawyer: "If the court finds in their favour, Irish law will be out of joint. But if it upholds some form of right to life of the unborn, that could affect the current laws in many other European countries."
One thing is not in doubt: Bacik will not want for energy in the fight. "I call her the Ivana twins," says her friend. "She is just involved in an incredible variety of things."
As well as teaching in TCD's law school, she is a barrister with a growing practice. She has written numerous scholarly works and books, including last year's Kicking and Screaming: Dragging Ireland into the 21st Century, a kind of personal wish-list for a secular, liberal Ireland.
From Asbos to the Rossport Five, cyclists' rights to refugee rights, Bacik can be depended on to lend her support to minority causes. Friends speak of her vim and loyalty; critics say that she spreads herself too thinly.
The key to understanding Bacik's politics lies in her early experiences as an outsider growing up in Ireland.
Her grandfather emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Waterford after the second World War to help start the Waterford Crystal glass factory.
She was born in London, moved to west Cork at age six, spent a year being educated at home by her mother Rina at eight and won a scholarship to board at Alexandra College in Dublin when she was 11.
In Cork she had an English accent while in Dublin she was the blow-in from Cork.
"Alexandra is very much a Dublin school and there was a lot of snobbishness there and I was the little scholarship girl up from the country," she recalled later.
Her mother was active in feminist politics in Cork and Bacik remembers distributing condoms with her on Coal Quay as a child. Her parents later separated and her mother now lives in Dublin while her father, Henry, an astronomer and physics lecturer, lives in Co Louth. She is the eldest of four children.
FROM SCHOOL, SHE went on to study law at TCD, where she joined the Labour Party and was elected as the union's third woman president. Controversy over the breaking of a voting mandate at a Union of Students in Ireland conference led to her resignation in 1990.
She studied labour law at the London School of Economics and qualified for the English Bar before the call for the Reid professorship came from TCD in 1993.
Friends say she was "devastated" by her failure to win a seat in the European elections.
"She didn't want to do really well, she wanted to win," one of them recalls.
Ironically, while Mary Lou McDonald successfully hoovered up votes for Sinn Féin, Bacik's politics place her on the republican, or at least nationalist, end of the Labour spectrum.
In reality, her best chance of political advancement lies in the Senate, where she will be challenging for a TCD seat next time around.
In 2002, she doubled her vote but lost to incumbent Mary Henry by 879 votes in the battle for the last seat. Of course, if she is successful, she will be emulating the path taken by Mary Robinson, who was elected to the TCD seat in 1969. And we all know where that led . . .
Who is she?
Ivana Bacik, Trinity academic, barrister and would-be Labour politician
Why is she in the news?
Bacik is the spokesperson for Safe and Legal in Ireland, a new campaign launched with the Irish
Family Planning Association, which is seeking the legalisation of abortion here
Most appealing characteristic?
Just because you're passionate on one side of Ireland's most heated social debates doesn't mean you can't be affable and polite (she does, after all, have pro-life supporter William Binchy as a colleague in Trinity's law department)
Least appealing characteristic? Tendency towards a Blair-like rictus brought on by repeated political campaigning
Most likely to say?
Abortion is a woman's right to choose (well, what did you expect?)
Least likely to say?
Well, here's to you, Mary Lou