What now, campaigners of all persuasions were asked on Thursday when it became clear that the Government had finally lost a referendum it should never have held.
What do we do next, politicians asked each other. To which the most sensible answer seems to be: do what Bertie Ahern should have done when it occurred to him that a referendum on abortion was the payback the Independents needed. Do nothing. Abortion is a serious, painful issue. It should not be hawked around the country to keep anyone in power.
During the campaign Ahern was accused of running from the challenges of Michael Noonan and Ruairí Quinn to debate the Government's proposals. His colleague Dermot Ahern said the Taoiseach felt so deeply about the issue he didn't want to politicise it.
Now we find that in the Taoiseach's own area the turnout was lower and the No vote higher than in most Dublin constituencies. In Cork Micheál Martin, the Minister who was supposed to lead the campaign, fared little better.
So much for the claim that he is, above all, in touch with the people. He'll go to the ard-fheis as he went to an EU summit after the Nice referendum - empty-handed.
Micheál Martin mutters that the referendum defeat won't affect Fianna Fáil morale at the ardfheis or in the general election. The electorate, he says, won't identify the party with its proposals. That remains to be seen.
He and other ministers use "the urban-rural divide", the complexity of the issue and "the intervention of fundamentalists" to explain the low turnout and the result.
But there's no doubt the Opposition - especially Liz McManus, Frances Fitzgerald and Nora Owen - won the argument, nor that their case was helped by divisions among doctors and lawyers, the performance of the Three Masters (of the maternity hospitals) and the eerie echoes of the X case.
The result shows once again that Fianna Fáil has yet to come to grips with social policies and church-state relations. This was the first occasion on which the alliance of Fianna Fáil, the Catholic bishops and lay activists was defeated, largely by social democrats.
It's 30 years since the first referendum on church and State - to remove the special position of the Catholic Church - swept in on a wave of goodwill. It was 1972 and the cardinal of the day, William Conway, had said he wouldn't shed a tear if the provision were to disappear; and in the Dáil, deputies of all shades fell over one another to follow his lead.
The mood spilled out into the streets, though, even then, there was confusion in the pub around the corner from The Irish Times. One of the regulars explained to a neighbour from Fenian Street, "If ye want to keep it ye vote No, and if ye don't think we need it ye vote Yes. D'you folly?"
The neighbour didn't. She said, "But what's it really mean, Liz?"
"Ah, Jasus," said Liz, "it's to make Protestants legal."
The goodwill lasted a year or more. So intent was the hierarchy on living up to the spirit of the second Vatican Council - and making Northern Protestants feel at home - that the bishops declared it wasn't for them to decide whether the law should be changed. It was for the politicians and the people. We seemed on the verge of enlightenment.
Then the Supreme Court decided the ban on contraception was unconstitutional. The Fine Gael-Labour coalition felt obliged to legislate. And bishops who had never accepted that it was for them to preach and for the legislators to legislate were suddenly back in business. Inevitably - because Fine Gael allowed a free vote and Fianna Fáil did not - the Bill was defeated. But the manner of the defeat was stunning: the Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, and a handful of Fine Gael colleagues voted with the Opposition against a measure introduced by one of their own ministers, Pat Cooney.
Some deputies couldn't bring themselves to mention condoms. They spoke for hours about "these things". Others talked a lot about slot machines and contraception culture. We carried on from one embarrassment to another. Charles Haughey's Irish solution to an Irish problem provided for the sale of contraceptives, but only on prescription for medical reasons. It didn't work; and the joke grew stale.
It was not until 1985 that an amendment proposed by Barry Desmond legalised the sale of contraceptives to anyone over 18. It was the first Bill in an area where the hierarchy had a traditional interest to have been passed without the bishops' permission.
But by the mid-1980s other fronts were being opened, other forces were being mobilised. Jeremiah Newman, bishop of Limerick, was unimpressed by the claims of minorities of any persuasion. Other Christian churches might allow something, but that "must not weigh with us Catholics", he said. "The fact that a few of our own priests and theologians would seem to favour it must not weigh with us either. There are always people like that, but we must stand by the faith." And lest there be any doubt about the determination of the church militant, the Papal Nuncio, Dr Gaetano Alibrandi, stepped in to invoke the memory of a famous victory when the Christians beat the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. What his audience made of this, at a Mass in Kerry during the 1983 abortion campaign, isn't recorded. But he had a more immediate appeal to local pride: the eyes of world, he said, would be on Ireland on referendum day.
The eyes of American fundamentalists certainly were. Some of them had helped to fund the Irish campaign and hoped to learn from it. Irish lay activists, by now beginning to wrest political leadership from the bishops, in turn, modelled their organisations and campaigns on those of their American counterparts.
They were successful in one referendum on divorce and lost a second by 9,000 votes. They succeeded in blocking the so-called substantive issue (on abortion) in 1992; and if Fianna Fáil or their successors try to change the Constitution and legislate for the future rather than the past they will make formidable opponents.
The minority, glibly dismissed by Jeremiah Newman, has become a majority. So the Catholic Church must take its own advice (1973) and become a pressure group like any other. And our political leaders must lead, challenge our national hypocrisy and provide for abortion in "certain circumstances". It's what the majority wants. But first, as the broadcasters say, a pause for thought and a general election.