20 The Sunday Times May 20, 2018 COMMENT ESTABLISHED 1822 Justine McCarthy Agonising over abortion is I’ll vote yes to make over — now the choice is clear this a fairer country hen the Irish public voted get abroad but with the addition of medi- to legalise same-sex mar- cal assistance at home, legalising abortion riage three years ago, the on demand can be seen as bringing an end sense of righting a wrong to the hypocrisy that has allowed the was palpable. As the flags authorities to turn a blind eye to crisis carried by the victors on pregnancies. Informed opinion leaves no option but to back repeal of eighth amendment the day correctly sug- The repeal referendum is the most gested, it was a rainbow divisive to be put before the people since he pain of childbirth is the most bed and talked so softly to my husband and me married — businessman. I reported it to gardai. Wmoment. This life-affirming event was a article 40.3.3 was inserted into the consti- excruciating pain you will ever have after the first miscarriage. I trusted him Two nice officers visited the woman, adjudging landmark in Ireland’s social evolution. tution in 1983. That was passed by a 2:1 in your lives, my mother used to tell throughout my third-time-lucky pregnancy her to be “not mentally ill”. She made them The outcome of this week’s referendum majority. The social environment has us, her daughters. Coming from and when, after our child was born, he seemed tea and said she could not remember how on repealing article 40.3.3, the eighth changed beyond recognition in the 35 someone who likened the exquisite nearly as happy as we were. And I trusted him she had heard about me, the businessman ecstasy of her first kiss with our father when, clearly devastated, he testified on and the abortion. They told her what she had amendment to the constitution, will be years since, but arguments are as vocifer- to that rare delight of “being hit by a Christmas Eve 2014 in the NP case, about a written was untrue and that it had upset me. less of a cause for celebration, regardless ous as ever. Both sides of this debate have combine harvester”, this was rather pregnant young mother being grotesquely They asked her not to write to me again. She of the result. A vote to repeal, allowing for been advanced in this newspaper, princi- Talarming. She was a woman who believed it kept breathing by machines after being promised. The letters stopped coming. the introduction of abortion on demand, pally by Justine McCarthy and David best to be prepared for eventualities, arming declared clinically dead, in a vain attempt to That’s the thing about being female, you see. will not culminate in the scenes of celebra- Quinn. Those in the middle ground who herself with what, in today’s parlance, would save her 15-week foetus. Your anatomy is public property. Your womb is be called informed opinions. She was a Boylan is one of 1,323 doctors who had the country’s moral bear pit. Your body is not tion witnessed at Dublin Castle. A vote for find themselves sympathetic to the plight woman overflowing with love, too, which is signed up by Friday morning to the pro-repeal your own. You, who spend nearly 40 years the status quo, maintaining the 1983 of women but uneasy at the prospect of probably why she suffered the agony of cause. As a former master of Holles Street, his dealing with periods and missed periods, could amendment that recognised the equal removing constitutional protection for childbirth four times. word carries great authority. He has been not possibly be as “informed” as others, right to life of the mother and the unborn, the unborn must envy their certainty. The The first time I got pregnant, I bought a card targeted for being a prophet in his own land. including the sort of men who avoid eye will anger those who have argued passion- middle-ground voters, represented by the depicting a baby and wrote inside: “Hello The low point came during Monday night’s contact with tampons in a supermarket aisle. ately that women are entitled to decide on “don’t knows” and standing at 19% in daddy. Looking forward to seeing you in nine RTE television debate when John Monaghan, Right now, servants of the state are trying months.” My husband discovered it propped a fellow retired obstetrician, called what was to justify having withheld information from their bodily autonomy and that the consti- today’s Sunday Times/B&A poll of voting against his dinner plate that night. He looked done to NP “noble” and suggested Boylan “go women about their own bodies in the cervical tution should have no say in the matter. intentions, may yet play a vital role in the at me speechless with happiness. I looked back to school” to learn about the foetus. cancer controversy. Their predicament was In the referendum, voters are being final outcome but that looks increasingly back, braced for the body-ripping pain. Mostly, the current debate has been less precipitated by the heroism of Vicky Phelan, asked if they want to remove from the unlikely. All the indications are that the It did not come. Into week 12 of the vicious than the 1983 one, bar the magnified who has shared the most intimate details of constitution the protection afforded the amendment will be repealed — and that pregnancy, there was blood. On my walk to bloodlust images paraded outside the National her life in pursuit of justice. In its laws and unborn under article 40.3.3 and to allow will signal the start of new hostilities. work, I took a detour to the National Maternity Maternity Hospital. What has not gone away in its practices, our state treats women as Hospital in Holles Street. “So terribly sorry,” is the undercurrent that women who argue imbeciles. It treats raped, pregnant children the Oireachtas to legislate for abortion. In In the absence of 40.3.3, the Protection I was told, gently. “It’s over.” I was taken to for abortion provision are fundamentally bad as incubators. Yet it treats barely there a judgment published in March, the of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 will theatre for a D&C (dilation and curettage) to mothers. The heavily Sellotaped, anonymous embryos as fully fledged persons. These Supreme Court ruled that “the only right prevail. That will remain the case until the clear out my womb. That night, a doctor pronouncements that “your punishment embryos enjoy the protection of the same of the unborn child as the constitution Oireachtas passes legislation. It is unlikely drew a curtain around my bed and talked awaits in hell” still arrive. constitution that enshrines the relic of a now stands which attracts the entitlement that unrestricted abortion in the first 12 to my husband and me so kindly that I cried Some years ago, I received a letter, signed woman’s place in the home. for the first time since walking into the by a woman and bearing a printed residential When I was young, a pregnant woman was to protection and vindication is that weeks of pregnancy, as planned under hospital that morning. address in Dublin. She said she had heard me said to be expecting a baby; not carrying an enshrined in article 40.3.3, namely the proposed legislation, will pass smoothly. I cried for weeks afterwards, on and off. I discuss abortion on a radio programme and unborn baby. A first-time expectant girl or right to life, in other words, the right to be Fianna Fail, in particular, will not add cried at home in the dark. I cried at work in that I was “a hypocrite”. Her letters kept woman was pregnant. Now she is “a mother”, born”. That might seem definitive but the many votes to the proposal given the num- front of embarrassed colleagues. I cried, not coming, a whole series of them culminating in conjuring up a sweet-scented meringue of joy. best legal minds are divided as to whether ber of its deputies and senators opposed because I had lost a child — because I knew, one saying she had reported me to gardai for It allows no acknowledgment of “the anxiety of this means that removing the amendment to repeal. Throw in a possible general deep in my marrow, that I had not. I was having had an abortion in a named Irish reproduction, the oddness of it, and how it crying for our shattered dream; for the family hospital, having gotten pregnant by my feels like dying, pulled inside out”, as Anne will remove all constitutional protection election, and passing the legislation is that, for a while, we were going to be. supposed lover, a named — and happily Enright described it in Making Babies: for the unborn in all circumstances. complicated further. But that is for Then I stopped crying. Life resumed and I Stumbling into Motherhood, the most beautiful If the referendum to repeal article another day. All that is required now is to got pregnant again. This time the pregnancy ode to anything that I have ever read. 40.3.3 of the constitution is passed, the put the repeal issue to bed. lasted eight weeks. No surgical procedure Next Friday, when I go to vote, I will stand international press will declare that Ire- The choice is clear.