Many women who vote ‘No’ in the forthcoming referendum will not know that their own daughter has had an abortion. They will not know the secret that their daughter has felt that she must keep from her mother. And their mother will never know their daughter’s secret. Their mother will die without ever really knowing her own flesh and blood.
Other mothers will know the agonizing, difficult choice that their daughter faced. Some will have supported their daughter in her choice to travel to Liverpool or Manchester or London. Some of those mothers will be ardent Catholics.
Choosing to terminate a pregnancy is almost always a difficult choice. And rightly so. It is a big decision. But the choice should be the woman’s.
The abortion debate misses the point when it weighs up the experience of one person who chooses to continue with a pregnancy against someone who chooses to terminate the pregnancy. Of course either choice is profound.
But the abortion debate is actually about whether other people have a right to impose their views on the autonomy of the woman.
The real debate is whether it is right for the people of Ireland to control a woman. To control her body. To insist that she continue with a pregnancy.
Regardless of whether or not the woman has been raped or is underage or has had traumatic pregnancies in the past or the health or ill-health of the fetus, it is not for anybody else to claim ownership over a woman’s body and to deprive her of her liberty.
Why do religious people impose their theology on people who do not share their religious faith? Catholics are required to believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, became pregnant without having had intercourse with Joseph or anyone else. They are required to believe as dogmatic teaching that the ‘Holy Spirit’ fertilized Mary’s ovum. No male member was involved, they are required to believe, in the creation of her babe. And it is that same non-sensical worldview that would require that actual real living Irish women who become pregnant should be forced to continue with their pregnancy and, if they do not choose to do so, that they should be forced to travel to England where their autonomy over their bodies is respected.
To my shame, I voted to bring in the prohibition on abortion in the 1980s. May this belated post be a small step by way of contrition to the thousands of Irishwomen who have been forced into silence and condemned by the ‘moral majority’, smug in self-righteousness; believing that they were doing something precious for their god when all they did was to promote duplicity and misery for women.
Women of Ireland, consider your daughters whom you may not really know: vote Yes for integrity, honesty, compassion, realism and the human rights of all girls and women in Ireland.