Ireland is set to liberalize some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws after exit polls suggested a landslide vote for change in what was until recently one of Europe’s most socially conservative nations.
As the vote count began yesterday morning, a spokesman for an anti-abortion umbrella group Save The 8th John McGuirk conceded there was “no prospect” the nation’s abortion ban, imposed in a 1983 referendum, would be retained.
“It’s a Yes” read a banner front-page headline in the nation’s best-selling newspaper, the Irish Independent, after two exit polls suggested a landslide win, which it described it as “a massive moment in Ireland’s social history.”
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An Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI exit poll suggested that voters in the once deeply Catholic nation had on Friday backed change by 68 percent to 32 percent.
An RTE/Behaviour & Attitudes survey put the margin at 69 percent to 31 percent.
If confirmed, the outcome would be the latest milestone on a path of change for a nation that only legalized divorce by a razor-thin majority in 1995 before becoming the first nation in the world to adopt gay marriage by popular vote three years ago.
Voters were asked if they wish to scrap the eighth amendment to the constitution, which gives an unborn child and its mother equal rights to life.
The consequent prohibition on abortion was partly lifted in 2013 for cases where the mother’s life was in danger.
“It’s looking like we will make history tomorrow,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who was in favor of change, said on Friday night on Twitter.
Vote counting began at 9am, with the first indication of official results coming by mid-morning.
Campaigners for change, wearing “Repeal” jumpers and “Yes” badges, gathered at the main Dublin county center, many in tears and hugging each other.
“It’s incredible. For all the years and years and years we’ve been trying to look after women and not been able to look after women, this means everything,” said Mary Higgins, obstetrician and Together For Yes campaigner.
“Yes” campaigners said that with more than 3,000 women traveling to Britain each year for terminations — a right enshrined in a 1992 referendum — and others ordering pills illegally online, abortion is already a reality in Ireland.
For the “No” campaign, the outcome was seen as a disaster.
“What Irish voters did yesterday is a tragedy of historic proportions,” Save The 8th said in a statement. “However, a wrong does not become a right simply because a majority support it.”
No social issue has divided Ireland’s 4.8 million people as sharply as abortion, which was pushed up the political agenda by the death in 2012 of a 31-year-old Indian immigrant from a septic miscarriage after she was refused a termination.
Campaigners left flowers and candles at a mural of the woman, Savita Halappanavar, in Dublin.
The Irish Times exit poll showed that majorities in all age groups under 65 voted for change, including almost nine in every 10 voters under the age of 24.
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