I was 16. Still in school. I missed her house call. It was the doctor’s wife. A good Catholic from Norn Ireland.
She figured that she had a kindred spirit in my petite god-fearing(ish) mother. How wrong she was.
From reports I heard later, the phrase ‘baby killer’ may have been used.
I was 16. I was at school. I really didn’t get the 8th Amendment. Then again, neither did most of those who voted.
Let’s get this straight: in 1983, we were constitutionally banning something that was already unlawful and not one politician around then would have legalised anyway... Throw in the bit about equal right to life and stir for a few years.
Fast forward to my mad college years and the stirring and simmering transformed itself to boiling - it turned out that giving a woman a phone number was unconstitutional. A field day for student unions that wanted to give out numbers.
Anyway, there was yet another two referendums agreeing women could be trusted with telephone numbers and passports. Of course, the ‘substantial issue’ was never ever mentioned even when we heard of Miss X or any of the poor alphabet cases that followed her to the Supreme Court. Or the 4,000 women in any given year since the 8th Amendment who’ve had to use telephone numbers and passports.
As I said, the substantive issue was never addressed by politicians too afraid to stand up to a church that lost any moral authority since 1983 and a tiny group of citizens who like calling women who travel ‘baby killers’. I’ve been told I escaped the bucket by one of these upholders of family values – but that’s a story for another day.
While we were all avoiding the ‘substantive issue’, one group of parents was sucked into the vacuum of the 8th Amendment. Parents who were given the heartbreaking news that the child they wanted to love and cherish had fatal foetal abnormalities. You do not need me to go into details, but anybody who listened to Richard Boyd Barrett in the Dáil debate on allowing parents who receive that terribly sad news will understand they will try everything to save their child even when the diagnosis says there is no chance their baby will live.
That debate. It was a very simple bill Clare Daly introduced. The two-doctor safeguard should have proved enough security in my eyes. I was wrong.
Those who live in fear of the 8th say it’s unconstitutional. By those, you can read ‘government with 18 months to run and an opposition thinking the exact same thing’. ‘We will look at it in the next Dáil,’ covers a multitude of sins.
However there are TDs on the government side who have les ballons to grasp the issue.
Tune into Lunchtime at 12.30pm to hear how one of the Labour Party TDs plans to keep his options open during this Dáil’s session if the Daly bill fails to pass tonight. Listen live: http://www.newstalk.com/player/
