May 26, 2018

Ireland Just Voted to Legalize Abortion

The Catholic country overwhelmingly rejected one of the world’s strictest abortion laws.

Niall Carson/PA Wire/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On Friday, Ireland made history when the country voted to repeal its constitution’s Eighth Amendment, one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. The referendum’s passage is a huge win for reproductive-rights advocates in a Catholic country that for decades pledged to give women and fetuses an “equal right to life” and made abortion punishable by up to 14 years in prison. 

The final numbers were overwhelmingly in favor of repeal.

Earlier today, there was an initial breakdown of the yes/no split by age group:

The Irish government is expected to introduce legislation that allows abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, appointed in June 2017, has called himself “pro-life” but he also voiced his support of the repeal, saying the amendment was “too restrictive.”  He described the vote as “the culmination of a quiet revolution in Ireland.” 

In January after his cabinet agreed to hold the referendum, Varadkar said, “I do not believe that the Constitution is the place for making absolute statements about medical, moral, and legal issues. An issue that is not black and white can never be explained in black and white.”

In 2016, more than 3,000 Irish people traveled to England to have abortions. Research suggests that at least a few hundred Irish women order abortion pills online per year, although an exact number is unknown. 

For decades, many Irish people saw the amendment as a symbol of the country’s deeply-held Catholic faith. Ireland officially banned abortion in 1983, largely in response to 1973’s United States Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion in the US. But in 2012, a woman named Savita Halappanavar died in an Irish hospital after she was denied an abortion. A year later the law was amended to allow abortions in cases when a woman’s life is at risk—but didn’t allow the procedure in cases of rape or incest or fetal abnormality.

Friday’s vote came three years after the country legalized gay marriage, which marked another big shift from traditional Irish-Catholic values.

Irish citizens from all over the world flew to Ireland to vote in the referendum, and the hashtag #HomeToVote was trending on Twitter this week.

Irish actors including Saoirse Ronan, Cillian Murphy, and Liam Neeson have voiced their support for legalizing abortion in Ireland. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItSxbbKp-TQ

The campaign for the referendum also included non-Irish citizens. In the weeks leading up to the election, there were concerns that foreign entities, including groups in the US, were trying to influence Irish voters. Amnesty International Ireland and the Abortion Rights Campaign, for instance, were required to return political grants of $150,000 and $25,000, respectively, to George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Government-transparency group Transparent Referendum Initiative and UK-based news org openDemocracy also exposed a slew of Facebook ads run in Ireland, purchased by non-Irish accounts.

Legal abortion will likely continue to be a contentious topic in Ireland, as it is in the US. But advocates say the vote represents a changing tone in Ireland’s politics. People from all over the world celebrated on social media after the results came in Saturday morning, and people in Ireland flooded the streets.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate