IT is with great reluctance that I revisit the abortion issue, for I bear a share of responsibility for the debacle of the 1983 referendum.
But as the investigation into an alleged abortion in Dublin several years ago has now unleashed an opportunistic relaunch of a campaign for a third abortion referendum, it would be wrong for me to dodge this question. For this misguided and dangerous campaign needs to be firmly knocked in the head at the outset, before this issue is allowed once again to poison the political atmosphere of our State.
Government in 1981 and in Opposition in 1982 accepted - in retrospect most unwisely - the idea of incorporating in a proposed review of the Constitution an antiabortion amendment that would be "neither sectarian nor denominational". On November 2nd, 1982, two days before the taking of a vote of no confidence in the Dail that led to its defeat, the Fianna Fail Government announced the wording of an anti-abortion amendment that was later adopted by the electorate.
Because the amendment was expressed in positive pro-life terms and appeared non-sectarian, and was in fact reported to have been drafted in co-operation with the Church of Ireland, I made the mistake of accepting it without first taking legal advice on its terms.
In Government two months later I was advised by the Attorney-General, Peter Sutherland, that the wording was defective. It could on the one hand be interpreted as excluding operations to save the life of the mother that were permitted both by law and by the Catholic Church. And on the other hand it was also open to a contrary interpretation that could actually permit abortion.
Faced with this advice the Government immediately rejected this dangerously ambiguous wording and proposed an alternative wording: "Nothing in this Constitution shall be invoked to invalidate or to deprive of force or effect a provision of a law on the grounds that it prohibits abortion."
FIANNA Fail, supported by eight Fine Gael and four Labour Party TDs, rejected our alternative formula and insisted on going ahead with the defective wording.
This course was then endorsed by the Catholic hierarchy, which in addition to stating its opposition to abortion, took the further extraordinary step of offering an assurance that the legal effect of the Fianna Fail amendment would, be to safeguard the life of both the mother and the unborn child.
In doing this the bishops usurped the role of both the Attorney-General and the Director of Public Prosecutions - and ultimately that of the Supreme Court.
The defective amendment was then adopted by a two-to-one majority in a referendum in which 54 per cent of the electorate voted.
Seven years later the Supreme Court decision in the X case demonstrated the fallibility, and indeed the essential absurdity, of the Catholic hierarchy's attempt to interpret the law. For that decision validated Peter Sutherland's view of the dangerous ambiguity of the wording adopted by the Oireachtas and the electorate in 1983, and vindicated our Government's belated - and unfortunately ineffective - stand against the defective wording of the Fianna Fail wording.
Finally, in a further referendum in 1992 the electorate, while adopting constitutional amendments on the Right To Information and Right To Travel, rejected a proposal to introduce a new amendment which would have overturned the Supreme Court's interpretation.
This sequence of events understandably turned politicians of all parties off the idea of further attempts to amend the Constitution on this issue. But, unhappily, it also made them kick for touch on the introduction of legislation to fill what the Supreme Court had described as the inexcusable failure to enact the appropriate legislation to give effect to the 1983 amendment - legislation that would set out the precise circumstances in which abortions to save the life of a mother might be performed.
The current attempt to reopen the constitutional issue is opportunistic, and shows an extraordinary unwillingness to learn from the bitter experience of past attempts to find a constitutional way of resolving this issue. For it should by now be evident that this issue is far too complex to be capable of constitutional resolution.
THE lobbyists who started this dismal affair 16 years ago still dismiss any criticism of their amendment on the grounds that all that is wrong with it is the Supreme Court's interpretation of its meaning"!
They thus attempt to set aside the fact that, in the interest of protecting human rights, our Constitution provides that the Supreme Court alone - not politicians, and certainly not any group of lobbyists - shall decide what meaning to attach to constitutional and legal wording.
It is almost beyond belief that any group should be so arrogant as to believe that they rather than the Supreme Court should decide what the Constitution means. Such a claim is especially sinister when it comes from a group which has persistently sought, like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, to make the word "abortion" mean what they want it to mean - viz induced abortions other than abortions in cases of ectopic pregnancies and cancer of the womb.
The self-styled Pro-Life movement has now submitted a draft constitutional amendment to the All-Party Committee on the Constitution. This wording would make "induced abortion" unlawful in the State.
Now, in the ordinary meaning of words, this formulation would exclude these particular operations to save the life of the mother - operations that have always been accepted by the State and by the Catholic Church.
Thus the Pro-Life movement now expects the electorate, including women, whose lives could at some point be at stake, to gamble on the Supreme Court interpreting the words "induced abortion" in accordance with these lobbyists' highly individual view, rather than giving the words their normal meanng.
That is a gamble that all but the most fundamental of fundamentalist will want to reject.
The Fianna Fail Parliamentary Party - which seems to be the only group in the Dail that still has fundamentalists in its ranks - should not have allowed some of these elements to drag it back into this quagmire.
For neither it nor any other party has anything to gain by following any further the will o' the wisp of an all-purpose constitutional amendment that the Supreme Court can be certain of interpreting to the satisfaction of the fundamentalists - and at the same time in a manner acceptable to the Irish people.
It is time to stop all this nonsense. Contrary to the delusions of some of these lobbyists, who persist in seeking impossible constitutional safeguards against what they see as abortion-minded politicians, the fact is that neither the Irish people nor their politicians are so minded. And these lobbyists should not be surprised that the contrary implication is deeply resented by those thus targeted. {CORRECTION} 87030700002