A chara, – Katie Harrington cannot understand why someone would be hesitant to hold a referendum on an issue like abortion (October 8th).
There are many good reasons, the most important of which is that referendums are blunt, unwieldy, and inflexible legislative tools, entirely unsuitable for resolving deeply complex and nuanced social issues like abortion. Your letter-writer must be aware of this, as she is dissatisfied with the consequences of numerous previous referendums on this very issue.
The recent Brexit victory demonstrates other problems. The campaigns before divisive and emotional referendums tend to be marred by disinformation and distortion, denying voters the knowledge they need to make an informed decision.
This ties in directly with the next problem – what would a “repeal” vote mean? Although the Leave campaign did not call for a hard Brexit, it now seems the only possible outcome of that referendum. In the same way, how could a person who wanted abortion legalised only in certain circumstances be sure that their “repeal” vote would not be used to support abortion on demand, especially as this is a fundamental goal of many pro-repeal campaigners?
Any referendum must spell out exactly what regime will be instated following a hypothetical repeal. This is the only way to ensure voters can make an informed choice.
Finally, Ms Harrington states that referendums are the most direct expressions of democracy. This is true. However, just because 50.1 per cent of a population vote for an outcome does not make it intrinsically good or even well-informed – it just makes it the more popular choice on the day. That popular choice has led to disaster on numerous occasions. Let’s treat referendums with the respect they deserve. – Is mise,
RUAIRÍ Ó CRUALAOICH,
Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Sir, – I was utterly shocked by the one-sided, propagandist view proffered by Ann McElhinney about her experience making a film on abortion in the US ("Making a film about abortion in the US opened my eyes", Opinion & Analysis, October 8th).
Gruesome accounts of foetuses being suctioned from the womb with instruments of destruction during late-stage terminations do little to enhance the debate on this issue. Of lesser value again are completely uncontextualised analogies of women electing to have an abortion because they thought twins were inconvenient or felt another child would “spoil” their family ideal.
This kind of rhetoric only serves to scaremonger and to lower the tone of the debate on this vital issue.
The one thing we can safely agree on is that abortion is never ideal. It is for this very reason that the pro-life movement has no credible opposition. It is countered merely by those of us who can pragmatically accept that no situation is ever black or white and that we cannot maintain so inflexible a stance while the reality of the “abortion issue” continues to affect Irish women.
Ann McElhinney is right about one thing, which is that there are important issues absent from the abortion debate in Ireland.
We remain inordinately focused on the question of when an abortion should be permissible, such as in the case of fatal foetal abnormality, suicidal ideation, rape, etc.
These are serious questions to answer but they seem less pressing when one considers the fact that as long as we have the Eighth Amendment, a foetus will have equal status under the Constitution to a female.
Until this utterly ridiculous legal anomaly is rectified, what happened to Savita Halapanavaar could happen to someone else, and thousands of women will continue to make that desperate, lonely journey to the UK each year, and people will continue to march the streets seeking to repeal the Eighth Amendment. It is time to let the people have their say. – Yours, etc,
SUSY KENEFICK,
Dublin 4.