In 2015 in Croke Park the Unite Ire­land Pol­i­cy Con­fer­ence debat­ed the issue of Repeal of the 8^th amend­ment to Bun­reacht na hÉire­ann. I was a proud Unite mem­ber that day, not only because of the out­come of the debate, but because we had it. As an observ­er it was a dif­fi­cult debate to lis­ten to in many ways. Feel­ings ran high. If you think of the most extreme views you can imag­ine on the issue, on both sides, or that you might see on social media or hear on your doorstep from can­vassers, rest assured that they were expressed in Croke Park at that con­fer­ence too.

The out­come was that Unite sup­ports Repeal of the 8^th Amend­ment, and will cam­paign for that in the upcom­ing ref­er­en­dum. We will do so as a found­ing mem­ber of the Trade Union Cam­paign to Repeal the 8^th Amend­ment, as a mem­ber of the Coali­tion for Repeal, and also in our own right as a Union. Of course, that does not mean that every mem­ber of Unite sup­ports that posi­tion, and peo­ple will of course vote freely in the ref­er­en­dum in accor­dance with their own views, but it does mean that the Union has a decid­ed posi­tion fol­low­ing a deci­sion of our elect­ed del­e­gates at the appro­pri­ate Con­fer­ence.

The nec­es­sary debate that we will have as a nation in the com­ing months promis­es to be dif­fi­cult, and there is lit­tle enough sign that it will be con­duct­ed in an appro­pri­ate man­ner, but to me the mat­ter has crys­talised around a num­ber of points.

First­ly, we now have abor­tion in Ire­land already and I think debat­ing the issue in any oth­er con­text is just not accu­rate. In addi­tion to the thou­sands of women who trav­el abroad every year for an abor­tion, the arrival of the abor­tion pill, pur­chased online and tak­en at home unsu­per­vised, is a real­i­ty that a mod­ern coun­try can no longer avoid. What­ev­er our views it is hap­pen­ing every day. So the ques­tion isn’t about whether we should have abor­tion in Ire­land or not. The ques­tion is how we reg­u­late it. From that start­ing point, my view is that reg­u­lat­ing it by a con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sion that sim­ply isn’t work­ing is wrong and needs to be changed.

No woman of child bear­ing age here has ever had a say on this issue. I have two young daugh­ters myself and I can imag­ine, I have imag­ined in my head, the con­ver­sa­tions that might flow from a cri­sis preg­nan­cy. I am not sure what out­come those con­ver­sa­tions would lead to. How could I be? For it is clear that ulti­mate­ly the deci­sion is not one for me. I as a man will nev­er have a cri­sis preg­nan­cy, let alone be left with the trau­ma of hav­ing to cope with a preg­nan­cy derived from a rape or incest, or be con­front­ed with fatal foetal abnor­mal­i­ty. And if I can­not make such a deci­sion in a fam­i­ly case, am I real­ly enti­tled to tell any­one else what deci­sion they should make in those cir­cum­stances, what­ev­er my views? I can’t see how that makes sense.

Much of the debate here will be about the cir­cum­stances under which abor­tion is lim­it­ed or reg­u­lat­ed should a ref­er­en­dum to repeal Arti­cle 40:3:3 be passed. The first point to be clear upon is that, if repeal is not passed, the debate on what fol­lows is irrel­e­vant. The sta­tus quo will per­tain until the mat­ter is addressed again. Will that pre­vent abor­tions? Of course not. It isn’t pre­vent­ing them now, and it won’t pre­vent them then. It will how­ev­er con­tin­ue to push the issue under­ground, to export the prob­lem, or to have it addressed through pri­vate unsu­per­vised use of med­ica­tions which can have seri­ous side effects. The clas­sic Irish head-in-the-sand approach to the issue would remain.

Recent­ly, I learned that the Nether­lands, where abor­tion is a right, has one of the low­est rates of abor­tion any­where, with 8.6 abor­tions per 1000 preg­nan­cies. I was inter­est­ed to learn that most of these abor­tions were not teenage girls, but were women in the 25–30 age brack­et, and that this lib­er­al approach has some­how result­ed in one of the low­est rates of abor­tion any­where. For exam­ple, it’s less than half the rate of coun­tries that do have restric­tions such as the Unit­ed King­dom (17.5 per 1000), France (15 per 1000) or the Unit­ed States (16 per thou­sand). And the Nether­lands, with its com­bi­na­tion of lib­er­al abor­tion laws and real­ly low rates of abor­tion, is not alone. Bel­gium, and Ger­many also have some of the low­est rates of abor­tion any­where. And then there is Switzer­land.

Swiss law changed in 2002 to allow abor­tion on request in the first 12 weeks of preg­nan­cy, a lib­er­al approach accept­ed by 72 per cent of vot­ers. This result­ed in a rate of 6.8 per 1000 women of child bear­ing age by 2011. The aver­age annu­al world­wide abor­tion rate is 28 per thou­sand women of child­bear­ing age!

This low abor­tion rate in Switzer­land (less than 25% of the world aver­age) is direct­ly linked to a low rate of unwant­ed preg­nan­cy and this, in turn, is linked to extreme­ly high lev­els of sex edu­ca­tion, the avail­abil­i­ty of con­tra­cep­tion and socio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors. Accord­ing to Rain­er Kam­ber of the Swiss Asso­ci­a­tion for Sex­u­al and Repro­duc­tive Health ‘one of the most impor­tant risk fac­tors is still a low­er socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus’. This is inter­est­ing in the con­text of the find­ings of a recent­ly pub­lished report con­duct­ed by Ulster Uni­ver­si­ty through a sur­vey of 3000 mem­bers of Unite, Uni­son, Man­date, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union and GMB trade unions enti­tled ‘Abor­tion as a Work­place Issue’.

The report con­cludes by say­ing ‘What emerged clear­ly from the sur­vey results and online dis­cus­sion was that this is a cru­cial issue for con­tem­po­rary soci­ety in North­ern Ire­land and the Repub­lic of Ire­land. As the trade union move­ment is the largest civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tion in Ire­land, North and South, com­pris­ing over 700,000 indi­vid­u­als, 52% of whom are women, unions have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to help inform wider soci­etal views on abor­tion, abor­tion access and legal reform’.

The best solu­tion to this dif­fi­cult issue seems to be to edu­cate, sup­port and above all else – and what­ev­er their choic­es – TRUST WOMEN.

ENDS