The abortion referendum has been largely dominated by the issue of the morning-after pill. Mark Hennessy examines the conflicting views.
Shortly after the Catholic Church's welcome for the 25th Amendment to the Constitution last year, a Fine Gael TD joked that the Irish bishops had turned centuries of Vatican teaching on its head.
"Thomas Aquinas must be turning in his grave listening to all of this. The Church's conception of conception has always been conception. Now they are trying to say something different," he declared.
On Sunday, the Bishop of Limerick, Dr Donal Murray, got back into the more typical mode by saying the referendum would not remove constitutional uncertainty surrounding the morning-after pill.Ironically, the "morning-after pill", as understood in other countries, is not available to Irish women and has not been licensed for use by the Irish Medicines Board.
Instead, women can get prescriptions from their doctors for triple doses of their usual oral contraceptive, which contain high levels of progesterone or oestrogen. The effect is the same.
Used in this way, the medication thickens cervical mucous, making it hostile to sperm. Furthermore, it alters the uterine environment and the endometrial lining, making it difficult for a fertilised egg to implant in the womb. A multinational pharmaceutical company, Schering, sought permission last year from the Irish Medicines Board to sell a proper morning-after pill known as Levonelle but it then withdrew its application.
Last October, the IMB accepted, following a 15-month review, that morning-after pills such as Levonelle were contraceptive agents, and not abortifacients.
However, Levonelle has not actually been licensed, since Schering has not resubmitted its licence application for the drug, which is currently on sale in 13 other EU countries.
The Government insists the legal position of the morning-after pill will be totally secure if the amendment is passed, since it defines abortion as the intentional destruction of unborn life after implantation.
In the Dáil, the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said: "These treatments are intended to prevent pregnancy and, as such, do not come within the definition of abortion as set out in the Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Bill.
"This legislation will therefore remove any doubts about the legality of emergency contraception in the form of the morning-after pill and the post-coital IUD." However, the Referendum Commission caused grief when it said the pill's constitutional position, as distinct from its standing under criminal law, would not be affected by the referendum, regardless of the result.
The distinction is not relevant, argues the Government. "Anybody can take any case that they like to the Supreme Court. We are saying that it is in accordance with the Constitution," said one source.
The legal position would be completely clarified, since sections of the 1861 Offences Against The State Act that could cover the use of morning-after pills or IUDs would be repealed, according to the Government.
The definition of conception is one that would occupy scholars for ages. For the Catholic Church, it comes at fertilisation. For others, it comes only after implantation.
The majority of fertilised ovum are discarded by a woman's body even before they get to the womb. Many more are discarded at that point. If nature does not safeguard them, how can the law do so, argue some quarters.
In its official leaflet for the campaign, the Catholic Church makes clear the issue is far from over: "The existing rights of the unborn from the moment of conception, under Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution, need to be reinforced by precise legislative measures. In particular, we are concerned that the adequate and clear legal protection be offered to the unborn prior to implantation." In Italy, the Catholic Hierarchy launched a determined, if fruitless, campaign during 2000 to stop the introduction of the morning-after pill there. "This is nothing but an abortion by chemical means," the bishops claimed.
The effort to stop Italian pharmacists selling the pill eventually provoked a furious response from the left-wing administration then in power in Italy, which warned that the church did not have the right to encourage people to break the law.
In the UK, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child is currently before the courts there, arguing that the morning-after pill procures miscarriages.