The people, albiet a minority of them, have spoken. The grand alignment of Fianna Fail, the Catholic Church and the official Pro-Life Campaign has, for the first time, failed to produce a majority on a sensitive moral issue in middle Ireland after a lengthy and co-ordinated campaign.
There are professions of bewilderment from political and other leaders at the result. A Yes vote in the referendum would have placed an absolute ban on abortion other than ias cases of a direct threat to the life of a mother, not including the threat of suicide. It would have qualified the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn child and outlawed the threat of suicide as a ground for abortion - even for a raped and suicidal woman in this State. There are claims from some quarters already that the No majority can not be hailed as a defeat for these propositions. The split in the Pro-Life movement, led by Dana Rosemary Scallan, contributed to the No victory.
There can be no gainsaying, however, that the overwhelming majority of people who voted against the referendum were opposed to the Government's proposal to row-back on the Supreme Court judgment in the X case. The greater the turn-out in a constituency, the higher the No. They came from the liberal Dublin and urban constituencies. They rejected an Irish solution to this particular Irish social problem. The courageous intervention of Deirdre de Barra, who wrote to this newspaper about her own personal crisis, brought the human aspect of this issue into clear focus. There were resonances of Mná na h-Éireann.
It is interesting that it is the losers now who are calling for a period of reflection. The Taoiseach writes in this newspapaper today that it is up to all parties to work together to study and understand the extremely close results and implications of this referendum and to act accordingly. The Catholic Church wishes to refrain from comment until the outcome is considered by the Irish Episcopal Conference at its Spring meeting on Monday. The Pro-Life Campaign is set to resist any attempt to legislate for the X case in the future.
So a threat to the life of a mother, whether physical or mental, remains the law of the land, as enunciated by the Supreme Court in the X case. The Pro-Life Campaign would do well to remember its own propaganda of the past few weeks - the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy) Bill, 2001 was the last referendum to row-back on abortion. It is also a time, perhaps, to recall that the first, unnecessary, referendum to ban abortion in 1983 was the mechanism that introduced abortion into Ireland.
Any interpretation of yesterday's result will be disputed by all sides. It can be claimed, with some justification, that it is not a mandate for a liberal abortion regime in Ireland. Neither is it a mandate to ban abortion in the extremely limited circumstances of the X case. The politicians who form the next government are honour-bound after this referendum to fulfill their role as legislators. The people have spoken for the second time on the suicide question and a sufficent majority of them have told the Dail that it is time to square up honestly to abortion.