ANALYSIS/ THE CHURCHES: The result came as a marked surprise to many, writes Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent
A number of commentators, brave enough at the weekend to predict the result of the referendum, declared that the Yes side would win. Yesterday, they were proved wrong.
In mitigation it might be pleaded that last Sunday there was no expectation of interference by "an act of God" - the weather - (least of all in this referendum) to deter voters in rural Ireland, heartland of the Yes vote. And there was the Catholic bishops' letter being read at every Mass in the State over the weekend pushing unequivocally for a Yes vote.
It was also felt that though young urban Ireland was very much No territory, they would remain true to patterns past and not vote in sufficient numbers on Wednesday either. Wrong.
By Wednesday afternoon, with reports of terrible weather in the west and a low poll there, combined with news from Dublin that the vote in many of the capital's constituencies was up on that for the Nice referendum, it seemed the Yes vote might be in trouble.
And it was. It lost by 10,556 votes or 0.846 of 1 per cent. A whisker and just 1,442 more than voted Yes to divorce in November 1995. Then the difference between both sides was 9,114 or 0.6 of 1 per cent.
There is no doubt that for the Catholic bishops, as well as the Taoiseach, this result is something of another slap in the face. They campaigned similarly against divorce in 1995 and lost then too. And last year they called for a Yes vote in the Nice referendum.
Although the weather was a factor in the low turnout along the western seaboard, we are not far removed from a time when even the elements would not have deterred the faithful from doing the bishops' bidding. Clearly those days are gone.
The past decade has proven costly for the bishops' authority and the reasons for this remain with us. Indeed on the This Week programme last Sunday, there was a harrowing item about the reign of Brother Ambrose Kelly in Tralee, with vivid accounts of his abuse related by victims, just before the item on the abortion referendum.
For the Taoiseach it has to be a worry too that, as with the Nice referendum, the bishops and the party have failed to deliver once more. Not least in the his own constituency and where the Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, lives. There it was No by a 16.1 per cent majority, or 5,403 votes - almost half of the nationwide majority voting No.
Confusion certainly was an issue and a clear "please-make-it-just-go-away" factor was also prevalent and played a part in the low turnout, especially in older rural Ireland. But where young urban Ireland was concerned there seemed a determination to get away from old hypocrisies and a recognition that the complexity of this most tragic issue cannot be dealt with by simple, absolutist constitutional means.
A contributory factor to the low poll in rural Ireland no doubt was the split in the anti-abortion movement and the prominence given the No position by people like Dana. For many traditional Catholics, her view was consistent with what they had always been taught to believe, that human life begins at conception, not implantation.
Many would appear not to have been impressed with the bishops' more pragmatic approach.
Indeed, there was surprise on December 12th when the bishops announced their support for the amendment. Many had expected that its definition of abortion - as "the intentional destruction by any means of unborn human life after implantation in the womb" - would be too much for them to accept. In particular it was felt Cardinal Connell would have difficulty with it.
It was known he had been consulted about the wording of the amendment, but he was out of the country when the referendum date was announced by the Taoiseach on October 3rd. He and Archbishop Seán Brady, the two most senior Irish bishops, had gone to Rome for a month - to attend a Synod of Bishops - on September 28th. It was six weeks before the bishops announced their position on the amendment.
The majority in the Church of Ireland will be happy at the outcome. Archbishop Walton Empey of Dublin, Archdeacon Gordon Linney, Bishop Richard Clarke of Meath and Kildare, Bishop John Neil of Cashel and Bishop Michael Mayes of Limerick all spoke forcefully against the amendment, saying the Constitution was not a place to deal with such a complex issue.
In this paper on February 27th, Bishop Clarke said a Church of Ireland deputation to the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on the Constitution had made its position on abortion clear but "not for the first time, our views have been set aside".
In The Irish Times yesterday, Steven King, adviser to David Trimble, lamented that Protestant opinion seemed "not to matter" in the campaign.
Both would appear wrong. Protestant opinion may have been ignored by the politicians but clearly it has not been ignored by the people, particularly in urban Ireland.