Ireland referendum: Yes or No

mossym

Confused about the thread title - maybe rename it to 'Ireland Abortion Referendum: Yes or No'.

The choice of course is down to Ireland's women and nobody else, however the repercussions of the result will ripple out all over the world - especially the Catholic countries who no doubt will be keeping a careful eye on the turnout and how close the result is likely to be.

This abortion issue is rooted in historical moral conviction, sentiment and attitude. But the shift in attitude is clear for all to see.

Hopefully common sense will prevail, but I have a suspicion the referendum result will be a very close call. The percentage of those who cannot make up their minds, the undecided, will be a big factor.

Bl4ckGryph0n

to give the local view as i'm irish

the no side is largely made up of the older generations who are more aligned with the church and age wise far beyond ever having to need to avail of these services.

most people i know under 40 are all on the yes side. however the old issues about the old and retired having loads of time to get out and vote while its a struggle to get those that have to work out wil certainly play a part.

it's not as clean as that either. my twitter feedline had two tweets in a row last week, one from "Nurses for yes", one from "nurses for no"

it's going to be very very close i'd say

domtheone

I thought the same as per above. I was very surprised to see so many young people involved in no in the debate.

Wow, will this be the first topic in politics where everyone in this little section of s great forum is aligned?

logiciel

Got to admit, I didn't really know until recently that Ireland had such a law.

Would be shocked if the law wasn't overturned.

IronGiant

No.

Toko Black

The exception that proves the rule

IronGiant

It's one of those devicive subjects that stimulates a disproportionate response from one side of the debate than the other.

Firstly as mentioned, the churches influence in the culture and politics of Ireland is stronger than in the mainland UK.

Secondly, both the Catholic and Prodestent church in Ireland/N.I are more conservative than on the mainland UK.
The troubles both polarised the population religiously and in that polarisation, a higher percentage of each denomination place their religion as a definition of who they are than the norm for the rest of the UK.

Thirdly, the idea that life begins at conception, especially if you believe that God creates that life, means that a significant amount of people will have very strong feelings in contrast with those that don't.
On the other side of the debate, the focus is from the perspective of a woman's right to her own body and to choose.
Womens rights engender a lot of support in society nowadays, but not as much and as strongly individually as that of taking someones life.
Ergo, if you do believe that abortion is ending the life of a person that came into being at the point of conception, you tend to feel emotionally far more strongly about it even across gender lines than about womens rights. We are genetically programmed to feel the desire to protect babies and children - the more you believe a zygote or embryo is an actual child(person) at that point in it's development, the more you are likely to feel strong impulses to react negatively towards it's termination.

It's also a much simpler and clearer issue for those that believe in life at conception than those don't, because science doesn't tend to deal with such absolutes.
It's far harder to argue about viability and likelihoods of survival as a position to take on whether or not a termination is immoral or not than if you believe in the absolute.

So in summary, even if in general, more of any age demographic believe in the right to abortions than not, the representative proportion of those people who feel strongly enough and get out to vote (or get out campaigning) is going to be lower than for those that are anti-abortion, this will be even more significantly seen in gender distributions - i.e a greater disparity in male voters.

It may be that case that in a 50/50 split in public opinion, you would find that in terms of votes and campaigns, anti-abortionists would appear to represent 80% of the public.
For it to be a case that the vote appears tied at 50/50, it would probably only require only 20 to 30% of the population to be strongly against abortion as a whole.

It's those with the strongest convictions and loudest voices that tend to dominate the political and social discourse.

Note: I did not express my own personal opinion in my above rant comments.
My own opinion on the subject is that I agree with the right to abortion, especially and absolutely before 12 weeks, or in the case of rape/the health of the mother.
I agree on principle that prior to 21 weeks, a fetus is highly unlikely to be viaible and it should be up to the individuals involved after advice and discussion to make their own choice as to carry on with the pregnancy or not - on the balance of ethical positions on the rights of the individual (mother and child) according to the best information we have available.

Trollslayer

To answer BG's question, yes, it seems we have a near consensus amongst the contributors (thus far) to this thread.

Dony

@Toko Black - a very good post, detailed plus separated analysis from personal.

weaviemx5

Just been chatting with my wife and we are both of a similar opinion.

The constitution as it stands is far too archaic and in my opinion needs to be amended to cover such things as fatal foetal abnormalities / rape etc, but we are both against abortion as a form of contraception.