The abortion battle in Ireland has been waged across two referendums and a half-dozen lengthy court cases. Its roots go back 25 years, to the visit of an American priest to Ireland in 1972 at the invitation of the Irish Family League, an organisation set up to defend family values against the threat of contraception and other evils.
Among its founders was John O'Reilly, an engineer with Dublin County Council and now the secretary of the Pro-Life Campaign. In his own words, he has "been in this business a long time".
"There was an agenda there. The political parties were probably the last to be influenced, it got into the media, the intelligentsia and from there into the political mainstream," he said last year.
The priest is Father Paul Marx, veteran anti-abortion campaigner and founder of the anti-abortion organisation Human Life International. In one of his organisation's Special Reports, dated May 1997, he recalls his first visit to Ireland: "In 1972 I came there to warn Dublin's Archbishop Dermot Ryan about the evil agenda of the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA), one of the 114 affiliates of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). IFPA invaded Erin in 1969.
"Contraception, sterilisation and abortion were illegal then. I told the newly-appointed Archbishop Ryan how IPPF always started with contraception and ended up imposing legalised abortion, bringing in dirty sex `education' and other evils for good measure."
Marx was quickly at the centre of controversy. During one of his early visits, which included talks to schools to impart his antiabortion message, he had with him a jar containing an allegedly aborted foetus. Some of the young girls who saw it became very upset. Many people, including those adamantly opposed to abortion, were appalled.
John O'Reilly told The Irish Times that he would not now be comfortable with such tactics, and described Marx's approach as "rather abrasive".
His own approach is very different, seeking to influence political parties and relevant professional organisations quietly by steady, persistent lobbying, using a constituency-based network of campaigners.
In the current controversy the Pro-Life Campaign has limited itself to a one-sentence press release urging support for the girl and her baby, though its spokesmen and women have engaged in debate over the need for a new referendum.
The present Pro-Life Campaign is the successor of the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign, founded in 1981 from a number of lay Catholic and pro-family organisations and fronted by an obstetrician, Dr Julia Vaughan. John O'Reilly was centrally involved, and the late Brendan Shortall was its public relations officer.
Its objective was to secure a "pro-life amendment" of the Irish Constitution, in order to prevent it being interpreted by the courts as allowing abortion in certain circumstances. This was the mechanism whereby contraception (for married couples) had become legal in Ireland.
Over the next two years PLAC intensively lobbied the political parties to commit themselves to holding a referendum on a "pro-life" amendment. By 1982 both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail had agreed. There then followed months of wrangling about the wording.
Eventually the Fianna Fail wording, which had the support of PLAC, was adopted (against the advice of the then attorney general, Peter Sutherland, who said it could lead to the introduction of abortion) and the referendum was held on September 1983. It was carried by a 2-to-1 majority as the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
While PLAC as such ceased to exist, most of its activists continued to be involved in campaigning against abortion through the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). They were also turning their attention to another battle, defeating a proposal to remove the ban on divorce from the Constitution. They were successful in this in 1986.
Immediately after this, a long campaign began in the courts to see the practical implementation of the 1983 amendment, by preventing, as far as possible, women from seeking abortions abroad. Open Line Counselling, which counselled pregnant women and, where they wished, referred them to Britain for abortions, and the Well Woman Clinic, which offered a similar service, were sued by SPUC on the basis that this contravened the right to life of the unborn as upheld by the Constitution. They won, the case was appealed, and the Supreme Court upheld the judgment in 1988.
In September 1988 the students' unions of Trinity College and UCD were similarly sued for information contained in their handbooks. Although SPUC lost in the High Court, it won on appeal to the Supreme Court, though by now the case had been referred to Europe.
The question of how membership of the European Community (as it then was) would affect the Eighth Amendment was already preoccupying anti-abortion campaigners. In 1991 they persuaded the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, to have inserted in the forthcoming Maastricht Treaty a protocol which would protect the amendment. This was accepted at European level.
But before the Maastricht referendum could take place something happened which put in question the results of a decade of careful, persistent and, so far, successful lobbying and litigation - the X case.
This concerned a 14-year-old girl who had become pregnant as a result of rape by a family friend. She was suicidal, and her family wanted her to have an abortion. The then attorney general, Harry Whelehan, sought an injunction in the High Court seeking to prevent her from travelling to Britain to end her pregnancy.
The subsequent outcry and Supreme Court hearing resulted in the judgment that, given that the right to life of the mother was jeopardised by her suicidal intentions arising from the pregnancy, she should be allowed to have an abortion. The implications of this judgment were that, where the life of the mother was in danger, abortion was permissible under the Constitution in Ireland.
Within a week, on March 10th, 1992, the Pro-Life Campaign was formed to fight for another referendum to overturn the Supreme Court ruling. Its personnel was substantially the same as that of the PLAC: the law professor William Binchy, John O'Reilly, Des Hanafin, Brendan Shortall and new recruits Joe McCarroll and Dr Catherine Bannon.
In November 1992, seeking to untangle the mess left by the X case and the Maastricht protocol, there was another abortion referendum. This put to the electorate qualifying clauses stating that the Eighth Amendment did not mean the prevention of travel to another state, or the giving of information about services legally available in another state, such as abortion. They were opposed by the antiabortion lobby, but were carried. The PLC then declared itself in favour of yet another referendum.
This has been at the centre of its activities ever since, though the personnel involved took time out in 1995 to fight the divorce amendment.
The 1992 referendum was followed by legislation spelling out the right to abortion information. This led to another raft of court cases, where the clinics and student unions successfully sought the restoration of their right to provide this information.
But the veteran anti-abortion campaigners were not the only people spurred into action by the X case. According to Niamh Nic Mathuna, she and a group of friends were inspired to come together to oppose abortion by the unquestioning assumption in the media that abortion was the right outcome for the girl. They founded Youth Defence.
However, her opposition to abortion went back to her early teens. Her parents, Sean Mhic and Una Bhean Nic Mhatuna, were hosts to American anti-abortion campaigner and associate of Father Marx, Joe Scheidler, in 1983. Scheidler was to reappear in Ireland in the 1994, at a conference organised by Peter Scully.
Indeed, some members of Youth Defence were convinced that the whole X affair was part of a conspiracy by pro-abortionists to undermine the Eighth Amendment. A young man called Clem Loscher (later an activist with the No-Divorce Campaign) wrote a book along these lines, claiming that the alleged rapist was innocent. The man, when eventually charged with rape of the girl, finally pleaded guilty on the eve of his trial.
While the PLC was quietly engaged in persuading county councils to support motions calling for a new abortion referendum (they claim about 80 per cent have now done so), Youth Defence was involved in more direct action. It held demonstrations and collected signatures opposing abortions, using graphic blown-up pictures of allegedly aborted foetuses.
It also picketed the homes of politicians, like Fine Gael TD Nuala Fennell and Minister for Health Brendan Howlin, who they claimed were promoting abortion. Nine members of the organisation were fined and bound over to keep the peace in May 1995 following the picketing of the Howlin home.
A Ballyfermot doctor, Dr Leonard Condren, was prevented from leaving his surgery for several hours because his wife, Dr Mary Condren, had been involved in drawing up guidelines on the Abortion Information Act for general practitioners.
However, Youth Defence denied it supported the militant tactics of American anti-abortionists who attacked clinics and doctors who conducted abortions. "Prolife is about pro-life. It is not about pro-death," Scully said.
In 1994 he organised a conference for the organisation founded by Marx, Human Life International. This led to the foundation of a branch of HLI in Ireland, with Scully as its executive director. The organisation, while repudiating violence against abortion clinics, does support the "rescue" of babies threatened with abortion.
It claims that the "myth of overpopulation" is propagated to promote contraception and abortion, and at a conference it organised in Dublin last March there was a lot of literature denouncing environmentalists who sought to elevate the earth-goddess Gaia above God, who had given the Earth to man for his exploitation.
The organisation has also been accused of racism. In 1990, in relation to South Africa, Marx wrote: "It is difficult. . . to get tribal people one step away from the bush and huts to manage a modern economy and rule themselves and democratically." Dr Seigfried Ernst, one of his close associates in Germany, voices concerns that the low birth rate of German couples is combined with more children being born to "foreigners". He sued a woman who described him as a fascist for his views and lost.
HLI is admired among friends and foes alike for its fund-raising abilities. The battle against "the forces of Satan in Ireland", who are promoting abortion, divorce and sex education, has been used repeatedly as a fund-raising tool.
In 1994 Marx wrote to his supporters: "Thanks to you, your generosity and your prayers, Human Life International is already on the offensive in Ireland. . . To run that office we've hired Peter Scully, a very dedicated, enormously talented pro-life leader. . . He spent several weeks at HLI's World Headquarters earlier this year so that he could get a real grasp of the work we do."
But this association ended in tears a year ago in the High Court. During the 1995 divorce referendum HLI used Scully's name in its fund-raising in the US without his knowledge or consent, he says. This proved very embarrassing to the No-Divorce Campaign, which he headed. He now says they did not sufficiently research HLI before becoming involved with it.
Referring to the statements of some of those associated with that organisation he said: "I am not a racist in any shape or form, or anti-Semitic. I have relatives by marriage who are Jewish. I'm just basically pro-life. I'm strongly against the death penalty. When I do my campaigns on child prostitution no one comes near me."
Yet some of HLI's attitudes seem to have rubbed of, in particular the inclination to become directly involved in preventing a girl from having an abortion.
`I told the newly-appointed Archbishop Ryan how IPPF always started with contraception and ended up imposing legalised abortion, bringing in dirty sex "education" and other evils for good measure'
`Thanks to you, your generosity and your prayers, Human Life International is already on the offensive in Ireland. . . To run that office we've hired Peter Scully, a very dedicated, enormously talented pro-life leader. . .'