Ireland recently passed a referendum to remove the constitutional ban on abortion.
What is the significance of this referendum?
The people of Ireland voted for this referendum even when a new law was proposed to be passed by the year end, when a women died after abortion was denied on grounds of constitutional ban.
This referendum is seen as a continuation of the quiet revolution taking place for past 2 decades against the invincible Church.
Ireland had a long stronghold of Catholic conservatism, and due to various issues, it is moving leftward.
What is the brief history of Ireland?
After Ireland threw off Britain’s yoke in 1922and became a republic,Church became most influential and established its own quasi colonial hold over the state and the people.
The President of Ireland in those early decades aligned closely with Archbishop of Dublin, who intervened aggressively in matters of law and policymaking.
On issues of specific concern to women, the Irish constitution took a deeply conservative tone due to interferences from the Church.
It recognised family as “a moral institution” and “fundamental unit of society”, and said that without the woman’s “life within the home… common good cannot be achieved”.
The contradictions between worldview of the Church and the ideals of a modern society appeared with the economic liberalisation of the 1960s, when women in large numbers joined the workforce.
Over the next couple of decades, equal pay was introduced, and Ireland’s traditional large families started to get smaller.
An economic downturn in the 1980s triggered a wave of emigration, exposing communities to a range of social and sexual freedoms.
Henceforth, quite a few resolutions, amendments have been made to instil more freedom to the people, which were initially against the rules made by the Church.
