Inside the same week two Irish politicians have just made daring statements on abortion. Or maybe not so daring.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams made it very clear that he was speaking for himself alone. At the Fine Gael ard fhéis this past weekend minister for health Simon Harris was less forthright than Adams but his was a striking statement all the same. In a couple of sentences it blew away the codology that has preserved the illusion of an abortion-free state.
''As the Irish minister for health,’ Harris said, ''I have to accept the reality that Irish women are having dangerous abortions'' - via pills bought online or ‘in another country’. In underlining both the danger and the reality, of course, Harris could be seen as doing no more than his duty as a health minister, or at least as making a nod towards it. Better, though cue for instant dismissal, if he said how the danger could be averted and how fast that should happen.
But two Irish males in prominent positions expressing themselves calmly and showing empathy on a subject long unmentionable still counts as progress. With his description of sitting ‘in far too many rooms with women who have found this country to be cold, neglectful, lonely and isolating’ the Fine Gael minister added more colour than the veteran Sinn Féiner. He had, after all, a week to reflect on what Adams said. The leading southern parties do not care to be outflanked by the gruff northerner in their midst, who is meant to stay in the box marked ‘bloodstained subversive’.
As most here know by now, Adams with no sign of rush or fluster supported a woman’s right to choose, to make her own decision on abortion. He also made it very clear that he was not speaking for his party, which will debate their position this weekend at their own ard fhéis. Unlike Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, or so it appears at the moment, Sinn Féin won’t allow their elected representatives a free vote on the forthcoming Dáil referendum bill.
The emerging new SF position has been road-tested over the years in the north. In the tussle with the SDLP for nationalist hearts, abortion took over as the SDLP swung towards same-sex marriage. Support for limited exemptions to the northern ban has lost few SF votes. Adams, in his deference to women, sounded a similar note to the late Martin McGuinness when quizzed in the wake of Sarah Ewart’s unanswerable story - of being forced to go to England to terminate a much-wanted pregnancy she had been told was unviable. McGuinness talked, vaguely but sympathetically, of it being ‘for the woman to decide’.
We are farther down the road now, Adams closer to taking a back seat in the leadership, presumably using what remains of his unmatchable clout to steady SF for the campaign ahead of next year’s referendum.
It’s well past time for Adams’s party, soon presumably to be Mary-Lou’s party, to get out ahead of the pack on a subject many young people think needed sorting long ago. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are well ahead in the polls, Sinn Féin’s sole area of dominance their appeal to young voters.
South as well as north the path towards legal abortion provision is woefully slow, contorted. Who could have foreseen the British moves of the past year that have given northern women access to the NHS treatment their citizenship should always have ensured?
DUP and other unionist opinion is still stinging from the mockery the party took over their deal to prop up Theresa May. That led directly to support across Westminster for a measure whose spirit unionists here have always opposed. British as Finchley? Not when it comes to reproductive rights for women. But the team Nigel Dodds leads had to bite their tongues, and now Scotland has provided the same services.
Sunday’s spat between Sinn Féin TDs Eoin Ó Broin and Peadar Tóibín, who isn’t about to walk away from the party but wants a free vote, may herald sharp words next weekend or may be no more than another marker on the way, another stage in SF’s political development. Tóibín says the committee preparing for the referendum bill is biased, with 24 pro-choice witnesses and only four against. Ó Broin, and others, think the anti-change lobby fails to put up defenders then cries foul. Another two men on abortion and this time disagreeing, in a party which once banned public disagreement; that’s more progress.
