the trouble, and which was now authoritatively interpreted as permitting, rather than pro- hibiting, abortion stood. It has, however, been ignored ever since. No law has been put in place to provide for abortion services in such circumstances. Ireland has just closed its eyes and given thanks for Ryanair. This is the hypocrisy the Strasbourg court has now blown apart. It is hard to argue a deep antagonism to all abortion when you can’t even be bothered to ensure that your own constitution does not allow it in certain circumstances. Or, more fairly, you are terrified of what a referendum campaign to change the provision might unleash. As a result of this latest case, Ireland will now be under not just domestic but also international pressure to bring its law into line, not with abstract human rights so much as with the guarantees set out in its own constitution. The Strasbourg case brings back memories of old wars fought in an Ireland that now seems a distant place. The country was in a dreadful state in the early 1980s, not so bad as today perhaps but stricken nonetheless. It had Catholicism then, though, as all those who witnessed Pope John Paul II’s 1979 visit will recall. After that triumph, a vast campaign began to protect Ireland from abortion for ever – the thinking was that the criminal law (which already prohibited abortion absolutely) was not enough because the judges could not be relied upon not to follow their godless col- leagues in the US Supreme Court in striking down such laws. (It was around this time that American right-wingers, many of them Catholic, were beginning their long campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade, and their Irish counter parts could already point to a major contraception case in Ireland in 1973, Magee v. Attorney General). After their success with the 1983 amendment, the Irish “pro-lifers” had set about methodically litigating to restrict the numbers of women leaving Ireland for abortions in Britain – until the catastrophic overreaching of the Xlitigation, after which came the referenda on travel and information and the campaigning ground to a halt.


o what will happen now? The reaction in Ireland has been muted, the country having more on its mind than its morality. In its chastened state, it seems incapable of resisting instructions from any foreigner, be it a finance minister, a bond- holder or a European judge. The crowd that took to the streets and the courts to protect the unborn in the 1980s were mostly middle- aged even then. The Church looks different to the Irish of today, who are more likely to learn about it from the Murphy report than from Mass attendance. An election is expected early this year and some desperate politicians may be tempted to replay earlier electoral successes by playing the “unborn card”. This may generate noise on the margins of Ireland’s bigger set of calamities but it will be without substance.


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■Conor Gearty is professor of human-rights law at the London School of Economics and a barrister of Matrix Chambers.


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1 January 2011 | THE TABLET | 17


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