From The Editor | Pocketmags.com

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From The Editor

Back in 1983, the Catholic Church was front and centre in the referendum campaign to change the Irish Constitution by inserting the Eighth Amendment. Fierce battle lines were drawn between conservative forces and progressive liberals, and the result (almost 67% voted Yes) showed how deep Catholic influence ran in Ireland.

Throughout the following years details emerged about the torture and enslavement of women, the brutalisation and sexual abuse of children, the sale and trafficking of infants, and the death and disposal of babies in septic tanks and unmarked graves – all overseen, condoned and facilitated by the Catholic Church. This was an image Ireland became blighted with, and this was the oppressed past we sought to put behind us as we overwhelmingly voted for marriage equality three years ago.

The world sat up and took notice. Here was an Ireland they had not even imagined existed – place of acceptance and compassion, with a people who exercised free will instead of bowing under the Catholic yoke.

With the referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment we find ourselves on the same faultline, between the repressive Ireland of old and the country we could be. But this time around, it seems to be much more of a secular battle. Neither side is bringing religion into the mix – well, at least not overtly – and (so far) Catholic officialdom has not weighed in half as much as it did over marriage equality.

Still, although the No side is generally steering clear of God, to imagine that its arguments are not rooted in centuries of Church teaching is to succumb to a subtle chicanery that’s at work. The pro-lifers aren’t carrying statues of the Virgin

Mary and saying rosaries (as they did in 1983), because if the marriage referendum proved anything, it was that the Irish people had had enough of the Catholic Church telling them what they could and could not do.

But rest assured, if you’re thinking of voting No, your vote is being influenced by the same religion that fought tooth and nail to deny you of your equal human rights as LGBT+ citizens of Ireland. Your vote is being influenced by the same patriarchal religion that denies women equal status in its power structures, and seeks to deny women the right to make decisions over what happens to their own bodies.

A friend of my mother’s told her she’s voting No because “those girls shouldn’t get pregnant in the first place”. It’s a ridiculous argument rooted in 1950s Ireland, but if you drill down to the very crux of the matter, this is what we’re dealing with, the same logic that made contraception illegal in this country until 1980, homosexual sex illegal until 1993, and which banned same-sex marriage until 2015.

Women have been procuring abortions, legal or otherwise, for unwanted pregnancies since time immemorial. A Yes vote simply recognises this truth, so that we can provide proper healthcare. A No vote will not stop people who need abortions from having them; it will only keep abortion shoved under the carpet so that we appear to be a country still adhering to a Catholic ethos. And that’s an Ireland we need to leave behind, for once and for all.

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