Noel Whelan: Why I am voting Yes in the referendum

At this point, seven days from the referendum, many voters have yet to make up their mind or at least to find certainty about the decision they have already made. After all the skirmishes in the poster wars, the radio exchanges and noisy television debates, voters are beginning to tune out. They are carefully weighing up a complex and difficult moral decision. They are seeking moral closure.

Making these kind of decisions involves a combination of intellectual and emotional engagement. Much as we might like to think differently, we do not make our minds up on social issues purely on a rational, detached basis. Our final views are also shaped by our cultural formation, our emotional reference points and even by our sense of affinity with or distancing from those making the arguments.

This campaign is different from many others.The best thing those of us who have considered the matter and come down on the Yes side can do now is to share our reasons. We do so not in order to impel any view to anyone else, but as illustrative of the personal journey through this decision-making process.

My views have moved to a place I could never have imagined 10 or even five years ago.

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Some months before this campaign began, after sitting down for hours to watch much of the evidence given at the Oireachtas Committee on the Dáil player, I came to the view that removing the Eighth Amendment was the right thing to do .

Some of what I took from those hearings was reflected here at different points over recent months. I was struck in particular by the legal evidence on how it will be impossible to frame law allowing for abortion in circumstances of rape or fatal foetal abnormality.

The Eighth Amendment has become a constitutional monstrosity tossed around in our courts and contorted in our politics. As someone who works in law and cares about our politics, I see the Eighth Amendment as bad law. It was an error which, because it was made at constitutional level, has taken decades rather than years to correct.

Abortion pills

My view is also shaped by the reality that the Eighth Amendment has not prevented Irish abortions – it has merely exported them to Britain.

In more recent times it has put Irish women in the precarious situation of taking abortion pills secretly in their homes, without medical supervision or support.

I have found reassurance about my decision to support repeal from a number of happenings over recent weeks. I have been struck by the many GPs, obstetricians, gynaecologists, midwives and others working in the front line of maternal care who have been moved to campaign for reform on this issue.

They are among the best generation of such professionals we have ever had, and they are appalled at the limitations which they say the current law imposes on their care for patients. They have chosen to do something about it. Theirs is an invitation to the rest of us to face up to the situation.

I have also found reassurance for my Yes decision when listening to the accounts of many forced abroad for early delivery or termination of pregnancy who have had the courage to tell their stories. In recent days the No campaigners seek to dismiss these difficult cases, saying the referendum is not about them. However, nothing can be done for these cases unless the constitutional position is changed.

A Yes vote for me will be about more than so-called “hard cases” – it will also be about acknowledging the existence of thousands of women who otherwise make the decision to travel for abortion or to order abortion pills on line. Every pregnancy is different, the circumstances in which someone chooses to end one are always particular to them.

Personal story

As is often the case, we find reassurance for our voting choice in a particular personal story which either resonates with us or appals us.

For me that story was from a woman who Morning Ireland called Ciara in a radio report last month. After a fatal foetal diagnosis, she and her husband had to travel to Liverpool for an early delivery. A week later they took the remains of their baby home by ferry.

Among the saddest moments of that 10-hour journey, she said, was when they came to customs at Dublin port. A guard there looked in, saw the small coffin and rather than raise any issue about appropriate documentation or otherwise, he just waved them on as if he had seen it a hundred times.

These are stories which are happening, and will continue to happen, unless we act. We don’t have to avert our eyes anymore. We as a country are better than that now.We have an opportunity to make that difference next week.