Last week, prior to the referendum and its result, I spilled my thoughts into this piece and begged people to read, to listen, and to think. It’s since been revised to be a post-result piece, as opposed to a ‘pre’ one.
Did you find yourself voting No on Friday? Had this referendum come sooner, I may have planned on doing the same.
I’m a young girl with a strong moral compass, a girl who hasn’t seen much of the world and wades through it using ideologies I’ve been taught to be correct. With those ideals came a particular way of thinking, a way of looking at the world as one colour. Ways of rationalization. Of approaches that seemed logical but ‘compassionate’.
I was out walking with my sister three years ago when she asked me how I felt about the eighth. I, using that seemingly logical approach, replied “I suppose it’s not fair on the baby, is it?”.
I was 15, and abortion to my mind was as it had always been painted for me: an unnecessary event with other options there. To my 15-year-old self, abortion was not the spectrum I have now come to understand it as, but instead what priests and teachers chose to tell me it was.
It’s not unknown that most of my generation have abandoned their Catholic identification by their post-secondary school years. It’s not unknown that their reasoning is so often linked with the history of the Catholic Church. But there is a difference between religions and the religious institutions that act on behalf of them. A difference to be aware when approaching this debate, should religious values be the thing that tied you to a No vote.
In that conversation with my sister those years ago, before she started to teach me and before I started to teach myself, my logic (based on my limited knowledge of abortion and the eighth at the time) was this: if there exist other alternatives to abortion, then it is unnecessary and unfair on the unborn child.
I thought that these other ‘alternatives’ were possible and tangible for all – they are not. I assumed that there were measures in place to protect women’s health when both wanted and unwanted pregnancies threaten it. There aren’t.
I thought that the Eighth Amendment, or at least what I knew of it at the time, reflected the compassion I had myself, and that that represented the compassion of this country as a whole. A lovely compassionate island with lovely compassionate laws and, therefore, lovely compassionate people.
Does that resonate? Is that how you feel, as a No voter?
The thing is, in theory, pro-life views often stem from the intention of compassion. They often grow from theory of protection and concern. But this isn’t theoretical. This isn’t black and white.
Life isn’t a two-piece of good and bad. And, in reality, the retention of the eighth represents nothing but the opposite of compassion. It shows that we are okay with exporting our problems – that it doesn’t matter what goes on as long as our eyes are closed to it. That the personal moral compasses of some are more important than the rights and dignity of others.
I don’t challenge the view that potential life has value. I agree that it does. But when potential life challenges and threatens the quality of existing life, how can we rightly diminish the value of those who are already living? How can we disregard the life that they have lived and are living, the people they love and have been loved by? Their successes and failures, their hopes and fears? Are these living, breathing women not of value too?
I didn’t know before how broad the spectrum of abortion is, but I know now. I didn’t know how damaging forced pregnancy is, but I understand now. I didn’t recognize that abortion is relevant to both planned and unplanned pregnancies. Now I do. Now I know. It’s never too late to learn, to understand, and to re-evaluate. I re-evaluated my beliefs, the ones that I thought were so fair and balanced.
The theoretical values I used to apply to concrete situations. I listened to my sister. I listened to those affected by the Eighth. I listened to the realization that this amendment could affect me, as it always has regardless of my not knowing. As it always could have had it not been repealed.
So, my message to you, a No voter, is that I was there, there in that trail of thought you’re trying (or not trying) to wander through. Keep thinking, keep listening. Keep questioning, questioning what your theoretical beliefs mean when they dictate the outcomes of real situations.
Is it okay with you that Savita was left dying without needed intervention because she wasn’t ‘dying enough’ to receive appropriate care under Irish law?
Is it okay with you that a 12-year-old rape victim, who is not properly mentally/physically prepared for pregnancy or child birth, has only two options: to go to term or go to Liverpool?
Is it okay with you that the ashes of a couple’s unborn child be delivered to them from the UK by courier because they cannot afford to stay there long enough to attend her funeral?
It seems it was thought to be ‘okay’ for quite some time. These real cases became mere members of tragic lists, lists like the one above, to protect the personal views of others.
But Saturday’s result indicates that people were thinking, that they were listening and that they were questioning. It shows that they questioned whether these cases-turned-lists were worth the maintenance of their own moral compasses.
It shows that the people of this town, this county, and this country went out and proved the compassion that they so strongly claimed to have.
SEE ALSO – The Laois Twitter reaction as Ireland votes to repeal the Eighth Amendment
