Grand Dame

Three years after the historic referendum to repeal the 8th amendment and allow legislation on abortion,  Ailbhe Smyth, Together For Yes co-director and star of a new documentary on the campaign, talks to Carissa Casey about Ireland’s coming of age.

Ailbhe Smyth is semi-jogging down O’Connell Street, explaining to two young women how to hold a banner so it can be seen. At 75, she is several decades older, but no less energetic, than the large posse of women gearing up for a march, in support of repealing the 8th amendment. The scene is captured in a new documentary The 8th, set for release on May 25th, the third anniversary of the referendum. And it encapsulates much of what made the campaign so successful; the enthusiasm and brio of the newcomers matched with the experience and still vibrant energy of the old-timers, none more so than Ailbhe.

With more than three abortion-related campaigns under her belt (1983’s 8th amendment, 1992’s right to travel/information and 2002’s unsuccessful attempt to remove suicide as grounds for abortion), Ailbhe knew before the referendum was even called, that this campaign had to be different. Not only had previous campaigns not worked but Ireland, in 2013 when she began planning, was a very different place. 

The tragic death of Savita Halappanavar in October 2012 was just the latest in a long line of heart-breaking cases related to Ireland’s draconian abortion laws. But it was a turning point, says Ailbhe. “It was a moment when people opened up to a reality that had been silenced for so long. It hit them in the face that there are all kind of reasons why women need abortions.”

It also came after two decades of revelations about clerical sex abuse and new revelations about Magdalene laundries and so-called mother and baby homes. 

“In 2013 we didn’t know there was going to be a referendum. We had to fight to get the government to agree. But we thought we should give ourselves a time frame, say five years. Interestingly that was how long it took.”

Planning was everything. “In the previous referendums we were reacting to something that the anti-abortion forces had put in place,” she explains. “This time we were taking the initiative. We specifically wanted to remove the 8th amendment from the constitution so that laws can be drafted and put in place and so on. We were the leaders, we weren’t reacting to anything. So we were giving ourselves time to plan it and we did a lot of research.”

From the outset, the campaign knew it had to bring people together. “We couldn’t go out there as a rake of separate organisations…We needed to bring a very wide range of civil society actors together to fight this. We started off with 12 organisations and by the time the referendum came there were over 100 - after a while we stopped counting.”

Together for Yes was an amalgam of three major women’s organisations and led by the leader of each – Ailbhe (Coalition to Repeal the 8th Amendment), Gráinne Griffin (Abortion Rights Campaign) and Orla O'Connor (National Women’s Council).

The tone of the campaign was very different. “It meant going very gently. It wasn’t our business to convince the people who were viscerally opposed to abortion.”

“We worked really hard to encourage everyone who was campaigning with us to do the calm conversation. Some people said we were too calm and too reasonable. I don’t think you can ever be too calm and too reasonable with a very emotional issue like abortion. You have to bring the temperature down and help people look at it calmly and reasonably.”

While the campaign was significantly driven by young women, as Ailbhe points out, “you don’t get two thirds of the vote unless older people are voting with you.”

The experience of unwanted pregnancy has always been as common in Ireland as it is in other countries, even if people in power didn’t want to admit it. Despite the ban in this country, Irish women had abortions, only they had to travel abroad for them. In previous generations, before access to safe medical abortions in the UK, Irish women resorted to other methods. 

“If I had a fiver for every woman in her 50s and 60s and 70s who said to me, it happened in our family. Or ‘I remember the lengths women used to go to try and end pregnancies’, jumping down the stairs, drinking gin in the bath, really quite horrendous stories,” says Ailbhe. “There was hardly a family in Ireland who didn’t have some understanding of this. Our job was to tap into that understanding and ask people to look at it”. 

“We always said it’s not about asking you if you would have an abortion, it’s about asking you to think about other people’s needs.”

The campaign became as much about the kind of country we wanted Ireland to be. “I always said out on the trail, I was doing this for myself back in 1983, then in the 1990s I was doing it for my daughter and now in the 2000s I was doing it for my granddaughter.”

As the campaign progressed, feedback on the ground was generally positive but that didn’t stop media criticism of the strategy. Ailbhe recalls a newspaper article a few weeks out from the vote that described Together 4 Yes as leaderless, lacking in direction and losing. 

“We were dumbfounded because that was not what we were hearing on the ground,” she says. “We were constantly being asked where are the leaders? The Together for Yes campaign was led by three women? Could they not see us? We were constantly being asked, where are the leaders? And we’d say, standing in front of you.”

Ironically, the co-directors rightly believed that the approach was bringing huge added value to the campaign. “For one or other of us to become the leader would have caused splits and divisions,” says Ailbhe.

Despite all the criticism, the predictions that the vote would come down to a knife edge, the result was a landslide in favour of repeal. 

It was a coming of age for the country, says Ailbhe. “People were realising that the religious and moral system we lived with, didn’t have a lot to do with how people were living their lives. It was about facing up to the reality of how people were living their lives. We wanted laws and regulations and services that reflect those realities rather than an ideal and aspiration that doesn’t really correspond with what people need in the everyday.”

“Some people say it was a complete rejection of the Catholic Church, but I don’t think so. I think it as a stern rebuke but it wasn’t a rejection of Catholicism. It was a way of doing Catholicism differently.”

By the end of the campaign, Ailbhe was barely able to walk. She was later diagnosed with a spinal condition which is managing to keep under control. But for her the back pain is associated with the burden she felt she was carrying, the determination to see an end to unnecessary suffering for thousands of Irish women.

In the end, she believes it was well worth it and not just because our law changed. “People found that kind, open minded part of themselves. I don’t believe change people overnight, but if you’re kind and generous in one regard, it’s not that hard the next time.”

The 8th will be available to rent from IFI@Home and Volta.ie from May 25th.