Results of the abortion referendum Helping to keep Ireland divided

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•IF THE old Protestant Stormont Parliament, with the full backing of the Protestant Church, but against the united will of the Roman Catholic Church and people, had forced through Parliament a law dealing with some complex moral issue, do you not think that Stormont would have been accused of the vilest form of sectarianism by acting against the united wishes of the Roman Catholic community and by insensitivity to Roman Catholic opinion?"

TROOPS OUT NOW!:

Jos tie Labour Committee on Ireland. SOME READERS criticised my account three weeks ago of the 26 Counties referendum to make the present lega ban on abortlon part of the constitution becaus I focused on the implications for Protestant/ Catholie and North/South relations, and not on moraen's rights.

"It should be Paddy Dullard", said one critic. Perhaps. But not for the reason he was thinking of.

One of the most striking things about the referendum campaign which ended on September 7 with a two-to-one vote for the amendment was that almost everyone, on both sides, opposed abortion and expressed general satisfaction with the present legal ban on abortion, under which Southern Ireland exports its abortions to Britain.

Mainstream opponents of the amendment argued that it would bring legalised abortion nearer because it was so ambiguously worded, and that it should be rejected for that reason.

The small group of campaigners for legal abortion - a woman's right to choose - were completely overshadowed, and denounced and condemned, by most of those who cempaigried for a 'no' vote.

Roughshod

The referendum was about abortion - but not about changing the position of women in 26 County society. Though it is. amide that the courts may so serpret the amendment as to " ine contraceptive "coil', ', for uple. ix sow the referenIves soDen as they. IRo issoe a Cacaolic I TO DE I EM Bax 5355. London WCIN 3XX felt reverberatin& throuch Irish politics for many years to come and perhaps for as long as the 'Mother and Child' controversy of 1951.

It is, and will continue to be, cited in the North as evidence: that Home Rule has meant Rome Rule in the South.

Listen to some of the comments from Protestants, Catholics, Unionists, Nationalists and socialists.

On August 26 the Unionist Belfast Newsletter commented editorially:

'Although there would be 'extensive and vociferous opposition in Northern Ireland to easier access to abortion, Unionists interpret the campaiga in the South as an attempt to strengthen the theocratic nature of the state.

Victory for the amendment campaign will therefore serve to strengthen objections even amongst the most moderate Unionists to the South. Claims that the Republic is essentially a sectarian society will be strengthened.

While both Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions recognise that human life is sacred, the amendment debate in the Republic is essentially about freedom of choice and the role of the State"

In its time the Belfast Newsletter has published a gloating editorial when Orange bombs went off in Dublin. Those constitutional Republicans in the South who let the Belfast Newsletter get in a position to write like this have a lot to answer for.

The same Orange rag could truthfully tell its already bigoted readers two days before the referendum:

"Roman Catholics attending Church services all over Eire Festerday were told by priests to nace for the amendment"

prise minister) 'Garret Fitzfraid, calling for a 'no' vote, Is a confict between a good Dol Victor Griffin, Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin. lucian and 'the Roman Catholic hierarchy? - which in Orange: demonology is the 'anti-Christ', the enemy.

On the day of the referendum the Belfast Newsletter pointed to the role being played by: the 'Republican' Charles Haughey — a Catholic bigot and simultaneously the most vocal 'United Ireland' man and old-fashioned Green Nationalist among the party leaders in the South. It presents Haughey as the Catholic hierarchy's man, and says:

•Little thought seems to have been given to the effect the prolife campaign has had and may continue to have on relations between the two countries north and south of the Border".

Of course, the Newsletter may be held to have little right to comment on such matters, being an advocate of (inevitably sectarian) Protestant majority rule in the Six Counties. It got all it could from the referendum in the way of anti-South, anti-Catholic propaganda.

Nevertheless, it expresses the attitude of one million or 8o Protestants, north and south of the Border. And what it says in this case is true.

Strangled

In the Belfast Newsletter a week after the referendum, Roy Bradford (former minister in the power-sharing executive of Faulkner and Fitt, brought down by the Orange general strike of: May 1974), wrote under the headline, "An Eye-Opener fol Irish Protestants" -''The deed is done. The bright. idea that the constitution of the Republic might be liberalised [and] made more acceptable to Protestants has been lured up a dark entry and noisily strangled...

'The Protestant community in the South has spoken up and stood up for its civil rights in a way it has never done before. This augurs better for future relations between the two parts of the island.

"But the pattern which emerges from the referendum is plain, with its implications for any hope of agreement between the two traditions. "In the urban areas, where the more thinking, educated citizens are concentrated and exposed to the climate of today, the attitude is open-minded. But for the rest the old adage holds: Roma locuta, causa finita est - Rome has spoken, the matter is finished.

'Starry-eyed Republicans have seen their future and it doesn't work. Protestant • citizens in the South are no longer starry-eyed...

In the speech quoted at the head of this column, Victor Griffin, Dean of St Patrick's Dublin, speaking on a 'no' platform which he shared with Michael D. Higgins, chair of the Labour Party, spelled out the issues as those of his general persuasion saw them:

'In truth the proposed amendment has little to do with the question of abortion, which is already prohibited by law.

"It has everything to do with the question of whether we are to enshrine in the constitution a particular ethical view on certain moral issues. This, I maintain, is not properly a matter for the constitution. It is a matter for the churches.

"A pluralist and truly Republ ican society will be sceptical of authorities or pressure groups, whether ecclesiastic, political, or racial, and will keep its constitu tional decrees and parliamentary legislation on moral matters to a minimum"

The Irish Times put the issues pointedly in an editorial (August 30) entitled, 'The Second Partition of Ireland". It insisted that the whole nation would not be voting.

"What we are working for now is freedom FROM the Six Counties, freedom from the promises down the generations.

"It is not just the Unionists we are abandoning. We are cutting off the one-third of our people in the North who represent naționaliam..."

And the Irish Times editorial on August 31 finished: "Forget the North"

Michael D. Higgins, a serious left-winger and opponent of the coalition between Labour and Fine Gael, spoke the truth and summed up the bitter experience of the referendum when (at the meeting with Dean Griffin mentioned above) he said that the choice posed by the referendum was one between:

"triumphalist assertion of the views of the intolerant on present and future generations, and a commitment so a pluralist, caring, compassionate society".

The fact that two-thirds of the electorate either didn't vote, or voted no, gives some bope for the future. But the intolerant Catholic triumphalists hold the stage at the moment.

CORRECTION: The account of the referendum in SO 146 contained an error: the 'no' vote in Dublin City was about 50%, not twozards of the poll.

STOP AN PHOR: ACHT/REPUBLICAN NEWS DARDA 26 County police man a checkpoint

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