GALWAY, Ireland — I came to Ireland four years ago to hear the searing story of the… Scarlet Letter in the Emerald Isle.
At the time, Ireland had a strict abortion law, shaped by the views of the Catholic Church. The Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, added in 1983, gave fetuses the same rights as those of the mother, making abortion illegal, even in cases of rape or incest. Anyone undergoing the procedure or purchasing abortion pills online faces up to 14 years in prison. Women were forced to sneak out of the country and go to London if they wanted an abortion. Some women went to loan sharks to get money to travel.
In 2018, a referendum on the repeal of the Eighth Amendment in Ireland sparked turbulent arguments on a topic that had been underground for centuries. Edna O’Brien captured the tortured drama in her novel “At the river”, based on the sensational 1992 case of a 14-year-old who was raped by a friend’s father and became suicidal when she was not allowed to leave the country to have an abortion. She later miscarried.
There was also the heartbreaking 2012 story of Savita Halappanavar, who rushed to a hospital in Galway the day after her baby shower in distress. She was told her 17-week-old fetus would die. When she went into septic shock, she begged the medical team to remove the fetus and save her life. A midwife coolly reminded her that she was in “a Catholic country.” She died after her stillborn child. The horror of that case set the Emerald Isle in motion.
I felt grateful as I reported on the referendum, which was passed with great enthusiasm, that I lived in a more enlightened America, long under Roe’s patronage.
Now I’m back and stunned that Ireland and the United States have swapped places. Ireland leapt into modernity, rejecting the insistence of religious reactionaries to control women’s bodies. America backed off, ruled by the insistence of religious reactionaries to control women’s bodies.
Ireland once seemed obsessed with punishing women. Now it’s America.
During the withdrawal debate, I dined in Dublin with prominent women from both sides of the issue. It got passionate.
Una Mullally, a columnist for The Irish Times, was there that night, advocating for repeal. I spoke to her on Thursday, curious what she thought of Ireland and America switching roles: Ireland is becoming less retarded; America more. Ireland less influenced by the dictates of the Catholic Church; America more, reflecting the views of the five right-wing Catholics on the Supreme Court and Neil Gorsuch, an Episcopalian who was raised Catholic. Ireland once had too much church in the state. Now America does.
“If you had told me 15 years ago that abortion would be legal in Ireland and illegal in many parts of the United States, I would have suggested you see a psychiatrist,” said Niall O’Dowd, the founder of Irishcentral.com and author of “A New Ireland: How Europe’s Most Conservative Country Becam It Most Liberal.” He mused gloomily: “Now that the world is upside down, there will be charter flights from America to Ireland for abortions.”
Mullally called it painful to watch, but not surprising. “I thought this would happen,” she said, citing Donald Trump’s incendiary claim during a 2016 debate that Hillary Clinton’s stance on abortion meant, “You can take the baby and tear the baby out of the mother’s womb just before the baby is born.” Trump also said in a interview that “there must be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions, later change to say that doctors should be punished. “I thought, ‘That’s it,'” recalls Mullally. “People thought there was an American dream, but it’s clearly becoming more of an American nightmare.”
She is baffled by the weak response from President Biden and the Democrats, who called it “appeasement” and “magical thinking” as Trump and the Republicans had for years cluttered the courts with conservatives who banned abortion.
“Democrats who say, ‘Women’s rights are on the ballot’ and ‘Vote in November!’ is insulting,” she said. “This is not about voting for your party. Nothing is more important than physical autonomy. And Nov? This happened in June. People should be on the street. Victims of rape cross state lines.” That includes the gruesome case of the 10-year-old in Ohio who was raped and had to travel to Indiana to have an abortion.
Some of the Americans never accepted Roe; it was the source of endless, divisive battles. But in Ireland legalized abortion seems to be accepted; some doctors don’t offer it; others will. And the church doesn’t fight back much; his power was decimated by the pedophile priest scandal.
“As Irish feminist Ailbhe Smyth said, the biggest victory in 2018 was the referendum without splitting the country,” Mullally said. “It’s about creating an empathetic framework of the discourse so that people don’t fly at each other’s throats.”
She gets it. Why not us?