Abortion is a particularly contentious issue in Ireland, where an overwhelming majority of the population identifies as Catholic. The Church was a main driver in the push to implement the constitutional ban on abortion when the Eighth Amendment first passed 35 years ago. But faith isn’t the primary reason people are still unresolved on the issue.
In fact, it hasn’t played much of a role at all. When I asked activists on the “Yes” and “No” campaigns what impact religion has had on the referendum, both sides said the debate was secular. For those advocating for “Yes,” the referendum is about allowing abortion care for women who need it. For those advocating for “No,” it’s about preserving Ireland’s protections for unborn children. “Very few people are approaching this from a religious perspective,” de Londras told me. “Lots of people are approaching this from a moral or ethical perspective.” [...]
This is likely due in large part to the declining moral authority of the Church in Ireland—a decline spurred by a series of scandals, including the revelations of child sexual abuse by priests in the 1990s. Since then, the Catholic population in Ireland has dropped from 91 percent in 1991 to 78 percent in 2016. The Church’s decline in authority has also been marked by a series of changes to the country’s social norms, from the legalization of contraception and divorce in the 1980s and 1990s, to the referendum legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015.
Some within the Irish Church remained strikingly silent on the referendum debate—and encouraged other clergy leaders to do the same. In a statement this month, the Association of Catholic Priests reiterated the Church’s teaching that human life is sacred at all of its stages, but went on to argue that the pulpit should not be used to campaign on the referendum during Mass. “[A]s leadership of an association made up of men who are unmarried and without children of our own, we are not best placed to be in any way dogmatic on this issue,” the statement noted, adding: “A vote cast in accordance with each person’s conscience, whatever the result, deserves the respect of all.”
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