The headline above is entirely accurate, and, at the same time, a little misleading. You might think, to read it, that the various main party candidates in the Dublin Bay South bye-election were engaged in a war over the legality of abortion, with one or two expressing a pro-choice view, and one or two dissenting. That would be very strange, given the state of the country, and the fact that abortion was settled, for the next while at least, by the voters in 2018, but it would, at least, be a genuine political disagreement.
Alas, that is not what we are getting. The row at the moment is about who did the most to win the referendum in 2018 for the Yes side. Fianna Fáil is staking a strong claim with its candidate, Deirdre Conroy, who actually went to court, they point out, for the right to abort her own pregnancy:
https://twitter.com/cardagh/status/1397089338274557955
The Labour Party, of course, is running Senator Ivana Bacik, who needs no introduction when it comes to the abortion debate. Senator Bacik, to be fair to the Labour Party, was campaigning for abortion literally before it was cool and trendy, and the party are eager to play that up:
Photos from this day 3 years ago .. when we #repealedthe8th #repealmemories #Together4Yes After 30 years of pro-choice campaigning, proud to be part of this historic change @IrishFPA @freesafelegal @dublinwellwoman pic.twitter.com/U4S7PQvA1e
— Ivana Bacik (@ivanabacik) May 25, 2021
And Fine Gael, of course, can’t be left behind, even though their own candidate’s abortion pedigree is a little bit more…. Debatable. He joined Renua, remember, after Lucinda Creighton founded that party having been ejected from Fine Gael for refusing to vote for a pro-choice bill in 2013. Nevertheless, James Geoghegan isn’t going to be left out of the pro-choicier-than-thou bunfight, as he made clear yesterday:
3 years ago we #repealedThe8th. Today we remember those impacted before this vital change to our constitution.We celebrate those who worked so hard to bring about this change. We focus on prioritising further transformation of women’s healthcare & delivering equal access for all.
— James Geoghegan (@GeogheganCllr) May 25, 2021
All of this, of course, is a little absurd. Whether you voted Yes, or No, (and this writer campaigned for a No vote) the referendum is over. The voters had their say. The abortion law will certainly remain the way it is regardless of the outcome of this bye-election.
Meanwhile, the country is facing into serious crises with the economy, housing, health, cybersecurity, and a whole host of other things. Businesses are facing closure, young people cannot afford to rent in the Capital, and the health service is beset with problems. Why, then, are the three main parties fighting over abortion, of all things? Abortion is the one issue that we can basically guarantee will not be impacted by the result of the bye-election, even if, in a massive shock, some independent standing on an explicitly pro-life platform were to win it. No difference would be made.
The answer, of course, is that the priorities of Ireland’s political class are entirely different from the priorities of the average voter. In the world of Leinster House, being an out and proud social liberal is a signal of social and political acceptability: It demonstrates, in short, that you are one of us.
Not being one of us is particularly dangerous in a bye-election. This is a campaign, after all, which will garner lots of national media coverage, debates on RTE, and on radio, and so forth. In a normal general election campaign, individual candidates will not be subjected to much scrutiny. In a stand-alone bye-election, they can expect to become national figures. A candidate not perceived as being “on side” with the priorities of journalists, NGOs, and the political-media class in general can expect much more sceptical coverage than somebody who sings from the correct hymn sheet. Think, for a moment, of previous victims of that same phenomenon – Sean Gallagher, Peter Casey, and so forth.
Indeed, in the case of James Geoghegan, it is already happening. Look at this, entirely inaccurate tweet from the Irish Examiner’s Cianan Brennan:
Should be remembered the councillor played a key role in the foundation of anti-abortion (pretty much single issue really) party Renua https://t.co/sEpgDt9drK
— Cianan Brennan (@ciananbrennan) May 25, 2021
James Geoghegan, for all his flaws, did not found a single-issue anti-abortion party. Indeed, the Renua he joined at the time had the exact same position that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael hold today – a conscience clause allowing people to vote as they wish on that issue. It became explicitly pro-life only after he left it. But because he joined Renua, a party that very definitively was not and is not “one of us”, he is already receiving sceptical, and indeed harsh, coverage.
The lesson here is that abortion is now becoming an issue – like gay marriage and immigration before it – where holding the “correct” opinion is fast becoming a requirement for admission into polite society. What we are seeing here is not the serious part of the campaign. It is Irish society’s new version of the profession of faith: I believe in one repeal, the cause almighty.
Exit question: One in five Dublin Bay South voters – more than nine thousand voters in total – voted “no” in the referendum two years ago. One wonders what they make of this display?