With the campaign to repeal the 1983 pro-life amendment to the Constitution gathering steam it is interesting to look back at the reasons why The Irish Times opposed that amendment.
What is particularly interesting is that its opposition was based not on any apparent belief in the ‘right to choose’, but on perceived inadequacies in the wording of the amendment, and on how the amendment, if passed, would affect relations between the Republic and the Protestant majority in the North of Ireland.
This second issue in particular dominated its editorials in the run-up to the referendum. Its leader on the day of the vote, for example, claimed that the referendum debate had “helped to rivet partition”.
It said: “Rightly or wrongly, the passing of this amendment will be seen as the Southern version of the unthinking majority rule which has for so long prevailed in the North”.
In other words, Catholics in the South were putting their stamp on the law of the land in the same ‘sectarian’ way Protestants had done in Northern Ireland.
Its editorial greeting the passage of the pro-life amendment said: “Majority rule exists here as majority rule existed for so long in the North”.
The Irish Times made rather a big deal of the fact that leading Protestant voices in the South were opposed to the amendment.
The big mistake the paper made was, of course, to assume that Protestant opinion in the South was representative of Protestant opinion in the North.
What we now know, and should have known then, was that Protestant opinion in the North is, in the main, very strongly opposed to abortion. The DUP, for example is far more strongly opposed to liberalisation of the North’s abortion law than the Catholic SDLP.
So the big argument that The Irish Times employed against the pro-life amendment was essentially built on sand.
The second big argument it used was that the wording of the amendment was flawed. In particular, it drew attention to the claim by the then Director of Public Prosecutions that, if passed, the amendment would make it harder for him to prosecute in the case of an abortion. This has, of course, been a non-issue in the 33 years since the amendment was carried.
In its leader on the day of the vote, The Irish Times claimed that the referendum was “not for or against abortion” because abortion was already illegal.
Note again that the paper did not base its opposition to the amendment on any pro-choice argument. Is this because it knew that back then even its own liberal readership would not countenance such an argument?
In the intervening years The Irish Times has, of course, become markedly and unashamedly pro-choice.
It now wants the Eighth Amendment repealed not because it believes the wording is flawed (although it still believes that), but because it wants to see abortion made legal in Ireland on wide grounds.
Nonetheless, it is instructive to remind ourselves that back in 1983 The Irish Times was on the face of it, pro-life, and the main arguments its editorials employed against the amendment were unfounded.