Voters are invited today to reach a decision on an issue of fundamental importance to the social and moral fabric of this State. For the fifth time in almost two decades, they are being asked to define the law on abortion in Ireland.
The amendments being put before the people in the referendum are complicated by the contradictory stances taken by the different interest groups during another divisive campaign. There have been attempts to confuse. For all of that, however, this is voting day and it is important that others, by default, are not allowed to make the decision.
That abortion is a matter of life and death on which the politicians, Churches and lobby groups hold trenchant views has become painfully obvious over the past few weeks. That doctors differ on the wisdom of the proposed changes, is evident also. The psychiatrists, obstetricians and gynaecologists break down on both sides of the suicide question. But, there is a great mass of ordinary voters who are not obsessed with abortion in the abstract until it comes close to their own lives in concrete form on some fateful day. Their views are as valid as those of the experts in the decision being reached today.
It is a signal irony that the main proposal in this referendum is to row back on the Supreme Court's judgment in the X case by eliminating suicide as a ground for abortion. That judgment was delivered on March 5th, 1992. The girl in the X case was a 14-year-old pregnant and suicidal rape victim. The man in the X case was convicted of unlawful carnal knowledge and sexual assault and sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. He served three years when the sentence was reduced on appeal. And on the tenth anniversy of the X judgment yesterday, the same man was sentenced to three-and-a-half years' imprisonment after being convicted of two counts of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl and falsely imprisoning her in his taxi.
Voters are being asked today to put a value on the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn child in her womb. They are being asked to strike a reasonable balance in all foreseeable circumstances. They are reminded, ten years to the day, that the man in the X case will serve six-and-a-half years in prison for raping one minor and sexually assaulting another while the suicidal girl in the X case could be sentenced to a 12-year maximum jail term if if she had an abortion in Ireland after this referendum. Surely, this is a value system worthy of some reflection. And whatever adjudication is to be reached on abortion today, go out to vote.