Fewer than one in five people wants the Government to hold an abortion referendum, according to the results of an opinion poll to be published today. Lansdowne Market Research found that 62 per cent of people questioned said some Irish women should be allowed to have abortions here. The poll was carried out on behalf of Abortion Reform, an umbrella group including the Irish Family Planning Association, the Dublin Abortion Rights Group, Women's Aid and Lawyers for Choice. Lansdowne Market Research said a nationally representative sample of 1,122 adults aged 15 or more were interviewed in randomly selected sampling between March 8th and 20th.
In recent weeks the Taoiseach Mr Ahern said the abortion issue would be put to the people in a referendum once the Cabinet sub-committee had finished its examination of the report of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, published in November.
That committee failed to reach a consensus and put forward three recommendations. These formed the basis of the options offered to people in the poll. The first option favoured by 36 per cent, effectively the Fine Gael position, was to leave the existing legal situation as it is, whereby a woman would be entitled to have an abortion in instances where her life would be put at risk by her pregnancy.
The same percentage of people favoured the second option, effectively the Labour Party position, of introducing legislation setting out the mechanisms that would enable a woman to access an abortion where her life could be at risk for physical or suicide reasons.
However, only 17 per cent of those polled were in favour of the preferred Fianna Fail option - an amendment to the Constitution to prohibit abortion - with exceptions relating to cases where the pregnancy posed a physical threat to the life of the woman. It would mean that abortion would no longer be permitted in cases where pregnancy posed a risk merely to the life of a woman - as in the threat of suicide. Twelve per cent of people declined to answer the question. Asked to choose from a list of circumstances whereby abortion could be allowed in the State, just over half of those questioned said that it should occur in situations where the woman's life was physically at risk. Thirty-seven per cent favoured abortion where the woman was at risk of committing suicide, while 47 per cent said it should be allowed in cases of incest or rape. Just under one in five believed abortion should be allowed whenever a woman believed a termination of pregnancy was the correct choice to make, while 16 per cent said abortion should not be available whatsoever. Forty per cent of people said that some of the Irish women who have abortions in Britain should be allowed to have access to the procedure in the State, while 22 per cent said they all should. Almost one-third of those questioned said no one should have this right. Due to the imposition of foot-and-mouth restrictions a smaller number of interviews with farmers were conducted in this poll than in normal circumstances. Data, according to the polling company, was computer-weighted to reflect the true proportion of farmers within the national population.