IT IS the issue that will not go away. In the United States, in Britain and we are promised here in Ireland, abortion has returned to haunt the political agenda.
In America passionate convictions on the issue have exploded in serious violence. In the past week - the 24th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision which legalised abortion - there have been three bomb attacks on abortion clinics, the most recent in Washington yesterday.
Last Thursday a double explosion at an abortion clinic in Atlanta injured six people. The people who commit these acts claim that they have had the effect of dramatically reducing the number of abortions in the United States, because in many areas doctors are too frightened to perform such operations.
In this way, they say, more than 200,000 babies have been "rescued" each year. A booklet issued by one group which supports these methods contains the phrase. Destroying abortion clinics is the purest form of worship".
Mainstream anti abortion groups have denounced this violence. But their own form of passive resistance has yielded impressive and frightening statistics. There have been 72,000 ar rests for picketing clinics in the past decade.
Could it happen here? Probably not, although it is worth recalling that hoax letter bombs have been sent to clinics which offer counselling to pregnant women, and pickets have been placed on the homes of politicians and doctors. But the experience of previous referendums on abortion left the country shocked by the stridency of the campaigns.
Besides, we have enough experience of political violence to be extremely tough on those who use it in the service of any cause.
Our experience is likely to be closer to that of our nearest neighbour. In Britain anti abortion groups have served notice that they intend to put up as many as 50 candidates in the general election, in constituencies where the sitting MP is thought to have liberal, pro choice views. Cardinal Hume has also made a dramatic intervention, advising English Catholics that they have a duty to remember that "there can be no place for abortion in a civilised country" and to vote accordingly.
THE Pro Life Campaign in this country has denied that it intends to follow the British example. The politically sophisticated leaders of the campaign have left us in no doubt about their determined campaign for another referendum on abortion. "We intend to, pull out all the stops for a referendum in 1997, was how Des Hanafin put it last month.
Other members of the campaign have made clear their opposition to the recommendation of the constitutional review group that legislation should be enacted in the Oireachtas to give effect to the Supreme Court judgment in the X case, i.e. that abortion should be permitted in cases where there is "a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother".
Prof William Binchy, the legal guru of the campaign, has been critical of the constitutional review group's proposals, which he has dismissed as "substandard" and, if possible, even more scathing about the intellectual credentials of the Supreme Court. He told a conference in Dublin recently that members of the court lacked the necessary philosophic resources" properly to interpret the Constitution.
He was not in any way impugning the character or the intentions of the judges. On the contrary, what was most alarming was that "good, conscientious people" lacked the necessary intellectual and philosophical skills and, as a result, had "practically wrecked" the fundamental rights and provisions of the Constitution, particularly as they applied to the protection of the unborn. Hence the call for a new poll which would allow the electorate to vote for or against legalised abortion.
Most of us thought, with considerable relief, that these arguments had been resolved. The trauma of the X case, the Supreme Court judgment, the subsequent referendums on the right to travel and to information about abortion facilities abroad all these seemed to have drawn a line under the debate and given us a solution of sorts.
This was a bit undignified, demanded a certain tolerance of hypocrisy. People like myself would have preferred if we had squared up to the implications of the X case, enacted legislation which would allow us to deal more compassionately with this kind of problem within the geographical confines of our own society.
Perhaps I am growing old and weary of the fight, but as a classic Irish solution to an Iris problem, it seems to have worked reasonably well. Recent surveys have shown that attitudes to abortion have softened considerably. Clinics offering counselling to women in distress have been able to operate without having to face the kind of vicious pressures demonstrated so recently in the United States.
In other words, progress has crept up on us without our being forced to make a difficult moral choice, and that, as Charles Haughey told me apropos legalising condoms, is how we prefer to do things.
But regulating the pace of change in this way depends on everybody being willing to accept the agreed Irish solution. What is alarming about the Pro Life Campaign is that their opposition is non negotiable. As God's Warriors, there is only one place for them to stand.
I do not myself believe - and I can't think Prof Binchy believes - that any political party will agree to another constitutional referendum on abortion. But, by raising the issue now, the campaign is making a pre emptive strike. They are warning politicians of all hues just what horrendous difficulties lie ahead if they attempt to implement the Supreme Court judgment in the X case and legislate for abortion, even in the most limited circumstances, to be allowed in Ireland.
THAT is what many people, by no means all of them rabid feminists, would like to see happen. There are doctors, counsellors dealing with women who have been raped or otherwise abused, who believe that such change would be not only humane and compassionate but would allow them to deal more honestly with the problems they face in their everyday work.
There is another dimension to this. We have seen in the United States how doctors and other professionals can be intimidated by the threat of physical violence. But there are other ways, particularly in a society as small as Ireland, of telling people that it is in their own interests to steer clear of difficult, controversial issues.
Formidable economic and political pressure has been put on the three students' unions which have been before the Supreme Court this week, defending their right to give information to their members about abortion facilities. Hopefully, in spite of Prof Binchy's misgivings about the shortcomings of the judges, we may be close to the end of this particular argument.
But politicians and doctors who have been lulled into complacency by the Irish solution to the issue of abortion should be under no illusions. This particular good fight isn't over yet.