A difference of 10,000-odd votes allows us to emerge from an era in which legalised Irish abortion was unthinkable, into one in which industrial abortion is but a couple of deft legal moves away. Had I wished to be alarmist, I would have written that a week ago.
I stayed out of this debate because I had no sense that either side had much to say to me. Abortion arises not in the thousands, but in single cases with unique circumstances and usually involving, essentially, two people. In most instances, the only person who could remotely stand a chance of defending or vindicating the rights of of an unborn child, apart from the mother, is the father, but nothing in the Constitution affords him any means of doing so, and nobody I heard during the debate seemed to give this possibility a moment's thought. I voted Yes without enthusiasm.
Attempts to suggest the result is ambiguous are fooling nobody.
This was a victory for those favouring unrestricted abortion. It was extraordinary to observe some of the most convinced opponents of abortion hand victory to those who have spent three decades working for abortion on demand. I assume they did not understand what they were up against.
The idea has somehow gained ground that the abortion debate of the past two decades was instigated by "reactionary traditionalist forces" in an attempt to assert Catholic values and make some some kind of - their opponents maintained - empty statement about the nature of Irish society. This analysis develops to paint a picture of an ill-advised and unnecessary campaign resulting in a clumsy amendment which left open the possibility of abortion being introduced by the back door. Some of this is factual enough, but it neglects to mention what these reactionaries were reacting against: in the early 1980s, when they first mobilised, several organisations were already discreetly campaigning for legalised abortion.
Perhaps Irish conservatives have by now learned that, once a campaign for an issue of individual freedom has begun, its ultimate victory depends primarily on the staying power of its advocates. Those who favoured industrial abortion were determined and cunning.
A few years ago, on a radio programme with a leading feminist, now a TD, I made a point to the effect that few of those who favour legalised abortion are prepared to say so openly, but invariably couch their arguments in euphemisms. Afterwards, my fellow panellist took me aside and explained that, yes, of course I was quite right, but I must understand that those who want legalised abortion cannot say so, for fear of alienating public opinion. They were, she said, playing a waiting game.
The waiting is over. It is clear, from the gains made by the so-called liberal side that it is now a matter of a few years at most before Ireland has its own abortion clinics. We can still debate whether this will amount to a good or a bad thing, but we cannot much longer hope to prevent it.
Undoubtedly, too, conservatives must take their share of the responsibility. By choosing the route of constitutional amendment, they walked into an ambush. If our approach to the abortion issue were applied to the formulation of laws in other areas, there would be no laws at all. Law is, by definition, uncompassionate. To enforce its will upon the individual citizen, society needs to withdraw sympathy from the transgressor. Decisions about right and wrong, and about whether to proceed against the alleged offender, are invariably and necessarily black-and-white issues, and qualities like compassion, understanding, leniency, are factored in, if at all, after the fact, introducing a human element into what has, up to the point of conviction or acquittal, been a matter of literal and unequivocal law. By discussing the complexity of each and every hypothetical possibility before putting pen to paper, we were ensuring no resolution could ever be reached.
The " liberal"/pro-abortion faction grasped that its opponents could not win a debate based on hard cases and extreme hypotheses. If you oppose abortion, the only honest approach is to insist it is always wrong, and that the law should reflect this, but that special circumstances should be regarded as mitigating the offence involved. Perhaps those promoting abortion sensed that the Achilles heel of their opponents was to be located in the uncritical veneration of womanhood in Irish Catholic culture. Oddly, conservative Catholics have in common with extremist feminists the belief that woman are incapable of unmitigated sin. Hence, both define abortion as primarily a woman's issue, and conservative Catholics shrink from rigour and clarity when staking out the limits of their case.
Once the abortion debate began to focus on its own extremities, it was inevitable that enough fudge would be created to wear down the apparently near-monolithic opposition on the subject. The electorate was subjected to a 20-year interrogation, at times amounting to a parody of a nice cop, nasty cop routine. "Okay, so you're opposed to abortion, but what if ...?"; "Yes, so we know about your compassion for the unborn, but what about compassion for the mother/teenage rape victim?" ; "Come now, you're not saying that you are prepared to let women die?".
Much more than it has to do with the erosion of the power of Catholicism, the shifting sand of the abortion debate results from a wearing down of public resolve. This, together with an increasing individualism arising from prosperity and middle-class metropolitanism, has brought us to where we now pause, briefly, for breath.