Abortion debate emerges again to vanquish illusion of consensus

The Taoiseach's hopes of a broad all-encompassing consensus on abortion are slipping away. His proposals are being opposed vigorously by Labour and the Green Party. Fine Gael's official position is to call for a deferral of the plan for three months, but its liberal wing found its voice over the past fortnight, ensuring the party will not back the proposal if it goes to the people.

While liberals condemn the proposal as restricting the rights of women, a substantial element of the pro-life lobby also remains outside the Taoiseach's hoped for consensus on the grounds that the proposal does not give adequate protection to the human embryo before implantation.

Indeed the battle lines are similar to those in 1992 - the first attempt to roll back the Supreme Court X case judgment allowing abortion where suicide is threatened - but not the same. The important difference is that a substantial part of the pro-life movement, including the Pro-Life Campaign led by Senator Des Hanafin, supports the Government proposal on pragmatic grounds - it may not be perfect but it's the best they can get. Some Government sources also maintain that there is an understanding that in time, the Catholic Church will come out in support of it as well.

However, the strong liberal and conservative opposition poses a serious difficulty for the Progressive Democrats, who have consistently made their support for the proposal conditional on a consensus growing around it. The Tβnaiste and party leader Mary Harney has said she will not support the holding of a referendum unless there is "sufficiently broad middle-ground support". Whether a support base that excludes Labour, Fine Gael, the Green Party and the conservative constituency represented by Dana and Youth Defence will be regarded by the PDs as "sufficiently broad middle-ground support" is uncertain.

The Progressive Democrats would not answer that question when contacted this week. A party spokesman repeated Ms Harney's wish for consensus. When invited to state whether the party believed such a consensus existed he announced that the party was "monitoring the situation closely".

Not that closely. At no stage of the committee stage debate did a Progressive Democrat deputy turn up, let alone speak.

The Government's Bill was guillotined through committee stage on Thursday evening. There was no substantive amendment to its core aim - to allow a referendum to approve a law which will give a statutory basis for current medical practice while outlawing abortion where a pregnant woman threatens suicide. The five days of debate resulted in a couple of minor amendments, but no change to the thrust of the plan. It is now slotted in for Dβil time next Tuesday and Wednesday to pass report and final stages. It was on the Seanad Order Paper - for a date yet to be determined - last week as the Dβil committee stage was still taking place. The Government is pressing ahead with its determination to have the Bill through both Houses of the Oireachtas before Christmas, leaving open what is believed to be its preferred option of a February referendum.

In the Oireachtas a strong and coherent anti-amendment voice has emerged from the ranks of Labour - particularly health spokeswoman Ms Liz McManus - and the liberal end of Fine Gael. The exhausting five-day committee stage debate took place almost unnoticed in a committee room in the basement of the new building at Leinster House.

Inside, Labour and many Fine Gael speakers united behind common themes that the Government proposal was an attack on the rights of women, and was an exercise in hypocrisy as it sought to facilitate abortions by Irish women abroad.

Much of this is an echo of the debates in 1983 and 1992. But there is one important difference - liberal politicians are now more relaxed about taking positions that leave them open to the accusation of being "soft on abortion".

As one senior Labour source said: "It has dawned on politicians that you can say abortion could be allowable in certain circumstances without risking your political career." Fine Gael's Nora Owen, Alan Dukes, Monica Barnes, Olivia Mitchell, Alan Shatter and others have adopted strong liberal positions. Dan Neville TD, president of the Irish Association of Suicidology, questioned the proposal, claiming to be from the most "pro-life" organisation in the State. The party's health spokesman, Mr Gay Mitchell, not personally a liberal on this issue, has attacked the bill on the grounds that the complex mechanism being proposed is flawed and may lead to yet more constitutional difficulty. He also raised some of the points made by those who oppose the plan from a pro-life position.

And while coherent opposition was being expressed in the Oireachtas, it was emerging outside as well. On the day the committee stage was passed, pro-choice and pro-life campaigners demonstrated on the same pavement outside Leinster House, united in their Opposition to the Government proposal.

Dana Rosemary Scallon, meanwhile, continued this week to question the Government's proposal on the basis that it did not protect the human embryo prior to implantation. Her warnings about the possibility of such embryos being used in research were seen initially by some as far-fetched. However, they appeared more credible as governments in the US and Europe sought to legislate to prevent such research after news of embryo cloning in the US.

Youth Defence, now calling itself the Mother and Child Campaign, is also shaping up to campaign against the Bill, its spokesman Mr Justin Barrett saying they will do so unless the pre-implanted embryo is protected by it.

The Independent deputies, who have pressed the Taoiseach for this referendum for the past four and a half years, were almost entirely absent during the five days of detailed debate. Ms Mildred Fox showed up once but did not speak. None of the other three appeared at all in the basement committee room. As those who had been lukewarm about having a referendum at all battled it out in sometimes emotional terms, those who had been so keen on it remained silent, and elsewhere.