Miriam Lord: Legislation on demand? No need for that

What would happen if a majority of the electorate voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution?

The floodgates would open, that’s what, and the worst fears of a majority of our fearless politicians would come to pass.

Legislation on demand.

Nobody wants that.

Least of all Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin.

It’s all very fine to talk about repealing the controversial abortion clause but then what?

Most of the politicians – apart from heathen lefties, the tattered remnants of Labour and some fallen women from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – would want to do nothing in the advent of a repeal. Keep everything illegal would be their preference.

But then the pressure would start piling on and all of a sudden there would be talk of elected representatives enduring “crisis” quandaries and agonising over what they should do next.

At first, the politicians would only be in favour of legislating in the most extreme of circumstances, putting together the most restrictive abortion law possible.

But bit by bit, because they are essentially weak and can’t really think for themselves, a situation would come about where TDs would start legislating for all sorts of difficult things.

And before we know it, they’d be legislating to their hearts’ content, even on unthinkable sort of issues that could lead them to losing their Dáil seats.

And at it right up to the end of their full term, because they opened the legislative floodgates and lost all self-control.

Ireland would become a democratically promiscuous country.

It is for this reason that they religiously use the political prophylactic of committees, reports and the cold shower of focus groups and forums to keep themselves protected from unsafe legislating.

Fine Gael’s excuse

The latest one is called the citizens’ assembly. This is Fine Gael’s excuse for not having to hold a referendum on the Eighth Amendment.

A panel of “ordinary” Irish men and women from all walks of life are to be brought together to talk about abortion.

They might consider meeting in an airport departures lounge where they could take soundings from the “ordinary” Irish women and girls from all walks of life taking the plane abroad in order to terminate pregnancies.

Bríd Smith of AAA-PBP asked the Taoiseach yesterday when this proposed assembly will report its findings.

She spoke after the Taoiseach and the leader of Fianna Fáil had a discussion about it.

Which was after they had an argument on which of their party’s cherished the gays more before the marriage equality referendum.

The Taoiseach told Micheál that his party was “invisible.” And Micheál reminded Enda that he once fell over a flowerpot in his effort to escape a question on the issue.

“It’s very interesting to listen to this discussion because it’s been dominated by two men who are leading the two biggest conservative parties in the country and both of them avoiding what is really the key issue here, and the key issue is a woman’s right to control her own body and the men don’t want to face up to that” Bríd told them. They didn’t look too pleased.

Dissatisfied

“Thirty-three years of my adult life I’ve lived with this amendment to the Constitution, as have other people, and indeed, lots of men in this country who are very dissatisfied with it,” she said, suggesting the time had come to hold a referendum.

It’s not as easy as just holding a referendum, opined Enda. “It’s much more profound than that.”

Micheál Martin isn’t too keen on the idea of a citizens’ assembly and has come up a new way to deal with the never-discussed-before issue of abortion.

"I believe a judge-led commission initiative would feed into an all-party Oireachtas committee and would be the best route to deal with this.

Irrespective of one’s views, an Oireachtas committee has the capacity, with legal backup, to go through all the scenarios.”

Not unreasonably, he took umbrage at the “attempt here this morning, because I happen to be a male, to infer that I have no right to adopt any position on this”.

He pointed out that we live in a democracy, he is elected by the people and is as entitled as anyone else to his position.

“By the way, my position is that I am pro-life by instinct.”

“Yeah, we know” retorted Coppinger, as we thought of what a raped and pregnant teenager would instinctively want to do, or what the instinct of parents who’ve just learned that their baby has a fatal foetal abnormality might be.

“I’m pro-life as well,” said Smith.

“We’re all pro-life,” added Coppinger.

The Fianna Fáil leader concluded that he equally accepts “the perspectives of other people” and the complexities and difficulties of the issues.

“Everyone has been through life experiences and no one has a monopoly or uniformity of views.”

Bríd Smith’s reply was short and to the point.

“So let the woman decide.”