Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 25, 1992 TAG: 9202250111
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: RICHARD O'MARA THE BALTIMORE SUN
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Long
TEEN'S PAINFUL SITUATION HAS ALL OF IRELAND WRITHING
There is a depressed and beleaguered young girl somewhere in this city who has shaken Ireland to its roots.She is 14 years old and pregnant through rape, which is why she goes unnamed in the newspaper and television stories about her. She has been constrained by the Irish High Court from traveling to England for an abortion.
The pain of her predicament projects itself across the nation. It is seen as a vengeful contrivance by fate, the worst possible outcome imagined by those who opposed the amendment put into the Irish constitution by referendum in 1983 that prohibits abortion.
The world sees Ireland today as an obscuritanist and reactionary land because of this. The voices of Ireland on all sides are full of anguish, confusion and shame.
"We feel we've become the laughingstock of the civilized world," said Dr. James Loughran, who runs a family planning clinic in Dublin. "It is very degrading for us to be considered as such."
Dr. Mary F. Lucey, the president of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, feels besieged. Reporters call her from every part of the world; they dog her at her home in Kilkernan. "It is all blown up," she says. "We are seen as criminals in an unkind, a heartless country, a Ceaucescu-style country."
Two women, Monica Corish and Yvonne Lynch, picket Leinster House on Kildlare Street in the cold wind. As they walk, a passer-by, a woman with a small dog, points in through the gate and hisses, "It's desperate, eh?"
Inside, the leaders of Ireland's political parties grapple with the dilemma before them. Their words are rich in sympathy for the young girl. But to some their behavior under the drug of crisis seems a little unreal.
The same government that restrained her through the action of its attorney general, Harry Whelehan, urged her to appeal to the Supreme Court against the High Court's injunction. The Associated Press reported that the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in private Monday, and a ruling is expected by week's end.
The government, headed by new Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, promises to pay her legal fees, which means the government is paying to have itself sued.
If the Supreme Court does not overturn the injunction and allow her to leave the country, the government has pledged to provide free medical and psychiatric care to help the victim bring her pregnancy to term. The girl has hinted at suicide, which makes the whole case so much more painful.
"It is all so crazy, so Alice in Wonderlandish," said 70-year-old Sean Mac Reamoinn. "It is the result of years of slovenly thinking and self-deception. This situation was bound to come."
He doubts that the High Court justice, Declan Costello, had the authority to prevent the girl from traveling, a right enshrined in European Community law. A priest who is also a lawyer, Father Bernard Treacy, questions the "extraterritorial" reach of the decision. Abortion is not a crime in England.
Yet, the judge is not blamed, nor is the attorney general. This is what makes the dilemma so sore, the escape from it so elusive. It is the absence of certain villains, except for the alleged 42-year-old rapist, who has not yet been charged. He is identified only as the father of her friend.
An unusual march of circumstance brought this case to the fore. Most Irish women seeking an abortion, some 5,000 to 7,000 a year, quietly go to England to have the operation. The family of the girl in question, from the middle-class community of Rathfarnham, openly told the police they were going. They inquired if fetal tissue could be used as evidence against the rapist.
Apprised of this, the attorney general sought an injunction. The family was even in England when it was issued by Justice Costello. Being "good, honest citizens," as one observer put it, they returned and put themselves in the hands of the law.
Though a few doubt the wisdom of the High Court decision, and some are angry that the attorney general did not just look the other way, most of the anger and emotion - and there is a lot of it - is turned inward.
"The villain is the Irish people, and these silly sectarian laws," said Dick Spicer, head of the Campaign to Separate Church and State.
"We can't blame them," says the picketing Corish, indicating the politicians inside Leinster House. "Basically it is our problem."
She advocates the most decisive form of resolution. It is the one the politicians and many older people are afraid of reaching for. It is another referendum on abortion.
According to those who experienced it, the referendum of 1983 that put the anti-abortion rights law into the constitution was the worst thing to happen to Ireland since the civil war that tore the country after the state was established in 1922.
"People ripped each other's posters down, cursed each other in the streets," recalls McLoughran.
Spicer remembers the venom that flowed back then. He is not eager to see it again. He believes it would put an end to all social progress.
"We're at a crossroads here," he said. "Ireland is trying to become a modern state. Another referendum on abortion could just stop it in its tracks."
Not everyone is so reluctant. Jon O'Brien was too young to have been active in 1983, though he was told it was "a vicious and bloody battle."
Speaking for the Irish Family Planning Association, he said: "We have the new blood to fight this. We don't have the scars from the last campaign.
"I think Irish society has matured greatly since 1983, though I'm not sure about the politicians. Once they get a belt from the crozier [the bishop's staff] they tend to run for cover."
He adds, with emphasis: "I believe a majority of the Irish people do not want abortion on demand in this country." Therefore, he said, any referendum would be to remove the anti-abortion amendment from the constitution. It would not be to legalize abortion in Ireland.
Though Prime Minister Reynolds said a referendum is at the bottom of the government's list of options, many people, including some of his own ministers, believe it is the only option, no matter what the Supreme Court rules.
The last such referendum in Ireland was in 1985, on divorce. It was as bad as the 1983 vote on abortion. It resulted in a constitutional prohibition on divorce. And it had another consequence: Many of those who lost on these two major social questions became convinced that the most retrogressive force in Irish life is the Catholic Church.
Though the church has not spoken out on the issue of the girl from Rathfarnham, except to say it would not try to prevent her from leaving, there is little doubt that as an institution it favors keeping the anti-abortion amendment in the constitution. Which is not to say all clergy do. Also, the church is aware of the damage done to it by referendums on such emotional issues.
Father Treacy, the editor of the Dominican journal Doctrine Life, remembers the last two referendums. "I think there is a kind of dread of the kind of emotions that would be released again," he said. "I suspect the church would be divided."
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.