NO vote wins by less than 10,500 votes.

Bard

The NO vote has come out on top in the Constitutional Amendment Referendum with 612,929 votes (50.43%). 602,503 people (49.57%) voted YES.

Bloody close, wasn't it? Less than ONE PERCENT in it.

full results list here.

Panda

Personally i think it would have been a larger no vote if the polling took place on the week-end.

They havn't taken into account the large amount of people that are away from home at college.
Or is that just me?

Boston

personaly i think it would have been a larger yes vote if the polling had taken place at the weekend

Aspro

So the status quo remains the same. A victory in the sense that this reactionary and backward piece of legislation will not go into the constitution.
Also I believe this was the last time the pro-life/youth defence elements will be able to dictate the issue to the rest of the country. It was their last stand and may they quickly wither into obscurity.

So now what? Will the next government (my prediction - Fianna Fail/Labour) have the balls to legislate for the X-case judgment as they should have done ten years ago?

Or do they bury their heads in the sand once more and throw us another referendum in 2012?

koneko

Time for a proper referendum.

Personally I think if the voting had been at the weekend, more young people could have voted, and from what I can tell more young people I've spoken to would (thankfully) have voted no.

Victor

Aspro, target the policies, not the people. Stop politicising a moral matter.

---

Table of results.

http://www.ireland.com/focus/abortion/news/results.htm

Note the urban / rural divide.

bonkey

Originally posted by Aspro
It was their last stand and may they quickly wither into obscurity.

So now what? Will the next government (my prediction - Fianna Fail/Labour) have the balls to legislate for the X-case judgment as they should have done ten years ago?

Well, gee, given that some pro-life were being encouraged to vote NO, and others Yes, and given that the end result was as close to a perfect 50-50 split as weve seen since Subya got into office.....I hardly think it was anyone's last stand.

If you look past the blinkers of your own beliefs, you may discover that this is a clear indication that the country, at best, is still harshly divided on the issue, and simply casting glib cvomments about "last stands" isnt actually going to change that.

jc

The Gopher

And we look like right tits accross the UK now because the result was carried live on Sky News.Im sure some Brits noticed that when the officer called out the result in Irish there was no cheering but as soon as the English result was called the No people started celebrating.In conclusion proving that we cant speak are native language.Why the gov still uses this ancient little understood banter passes me.
Anyway who cares?Things stay the way tney already were.I mean there must havce been about 2 abortions in the last decade.Huge waste of paper if ytou ask me.

Meh

Originally posted by The Gopher
Anyway who cares?Things stay the way tney already were.I mean there must havce been about 2 abortions in the last decade.Huge waste of paper if ytou ask me.

Amen. What a ****ing waste of time that referendum was. Thank you, Mildred Fox!

Boston

if someone, say from the eu, said you couldnt teach irish in schools, alot more people would learn the language

amp

Gophers right. What I learned from the coverage of the referendum is the bemusement by the rest of the world at the fact that we're still going on about this.

Aspro

Originally posted by Victor
Aspro, target the policies, not the people. Stop politicising a moral matter.

It wasn't me that politicised this issue and I don't believe it's a moral matter but rather a women's health issue. It was politicised by the anti-choice people since 1983 and whatever about 1992 there should never have been another referendum this year but they dictated and the government caved in.

Originally posted by Bonkey
Well, gee, given that some pro-life were being encouraged to vote NO, and others Yes, and given that the end result was as close to a perfect 50-50 split as weve seen since Subya got into office.....I hardly think it was anyone's last stand. If you look past the blinkers of your own beliefs, you may discover that this is a clear indication that the country, at best, is still harshly divided on the issue, and simply casting glib cvomments about "last stands" isnt actually going to change that.

When I mentioned the "last stand" I was referring to the pro-life movement as an organisation. They are a single issue campaign, they had one last attempt at denying women abortions in Ireland, they split over the issue and I believe they will now decline into obscurity. Btw I'm not belittling anyone's "pro-life" beliefs but rather this minority organisation who are a relic from 1950's Ireland. I think confusion was deliberately fuelled by the government in the hope that the more conservative elements would outnumber the liberals. Thankfully we have had a sea-change in attitudes, especially among young people over the last decade who realise there is no black and white to individual crisis pregnancy situations. Unfortunately many students were disenfranchised by the mid-week vote (again deliberately, I believe - young people are generally more liberal and this issue predominantly affects them).

I think despite confusion etc. the "Yes" vote was a conservative pro-government, pro-fianna fail vote and the "No" vote was a liberal, pro-choice vote. I don't buy this argument that youth defence or dana had anything to do with the defeat of the referendum. They are a minority within a minority.
And I don't believe the country is still harshly divided on this.

We had a very similar (in fact almost identical) result in 1995 in the divorce referendum. Ireland had accepted reality - marriages don't always work - and we passed the law. What happened? Did families fall apart? Was it the case of "Hello divorce, goodbye daddy"? Of course it wasn't. We acknowledged reality and now to the majority of people divorce is acceptable in Ireland in the circumstances in which it is unavoidable.

And the same will go for abortion, eventually. Society will move forward and maybe governments can start tackling the causes behind crisis pregnancies (proper education, proper health and social services, free or at least cheap contraception).
As they say, prevention is better than cure.

Irish_Ranger_IR

I am confused..

I taught I was clear before I voted, I voted No, I know this is real silly, but I am not sure now with YES to this and NO to that, and YES means NO and No Means YES...my mates are saying that I voted against what the goverment wanted, I just don't know.....

Help me.....

Who did I vote for?

Dr. Loon

Originally posted by Panda
Personally i think it would have been a larger no vote if the polling took place on the week-end.

They havn't taken into account the large amount of people that are away from home at college.
Or is that just me?

I reckon that was well taken into account... purposely.
If it had of been at the weekend it would have been a walkover for the NO vote.

koneko

Originally posted by amp
Gophers right. What I learned from the coverage of the referendum is the bemusement by the rest of the world at the fact that we're still going on about this.

Did you see the coverage on TV3 (I think it was)? They had reports from all over Europe there. The Danish (female) reported went on to describe how strange this whole situation is. In the last few years (she said) Ireland rose up as a celtic tiger, saying it was all modern, and with the times, and how this whole referendum makes the country seem so much more backwards. For the rest of Europe this is a closed issue, and everyone knows where they stand. And that Ireland has the strictest abortion laws of all countries in the EU.

JustHalf

Originally posted by Aspro
It wasn't me that politicised this issue and I don't believe it's a moral matter but rather a women's health issue. It was politicised by the anti-choice people since 1983 and whatever about 1992 there should never have been another referendum this year but they dictated and the government caved in.

Anti-choice...

You do not have the choice to kill people!

Yeah, I can see how evil these anti-choice people are. I WANT that choice. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Aspro
When I mentioned the "last stand" I was referring to the pro-life movement as an organisation. They are a single issue campaign, they had one last attempt at denying women abortions in Ireland, they split over the issue and I believe they will now decline into obscurity.

They split, but not out of losing sight of what they wanted. I'd like to know how you can see the future.

Originally posted by Aspro
Btw I'm not belittling anyone's "pro-life" beliefs but rather this minority organisation who are a relic from 1950's Ireland.

I think the election results show they are not a minority; considering that no pro-choicer in their right mind would vote yes (or so I'm told) and that I'm pro-life and no.

Originally posted by Aspro
I think confusion was deliberately fuelled by the government in the hope that the more conservative elements would outnumber the liberals.

Want to explain this?

Originally posted by Aspro
Thankfully we have had a sea-change in attitudes, especially among young people over the last decade who realise there is no black and white to individual crisis pregnancy situations.

There is. It's either killing a baby or it isn't. It's fairly black and white. It's only got shades of grey when you claim it's NOT killing a baby.

Originally posted by Aspro
I think despite confusion etc. the "Yes" vote was a conservative pro-government, pro-fianna fail vote and the "No" vote was a liberal, pro-choice vote. I don't buy this argument that youth defence or dana had anything to do with the defeat of the referendum. They are a minority within a minority.

Considering how close it was, the pro-life NO campaign was instrumental in defeating this referendum.

It's likely that if there was perfectly pro-life then it would of passed, but it wasn't, and it didn't.

Originally posted by Aspro
And I don't believe the country is still harshly divided on this.

Obviously a near 50/50 split isn't good enough of a divide for you

Originally posted by Aspro
We had a very similar (in fact almost identical) result in 1995 in the divorce referendum. Ireland had accepted reality - marriages don't always work - and we passed the law. What happened? Did families fall apart? Was it the case of "Hello divorce, goodbye daddy"? Of course it wasn't. We acknowledged reality and now to the majority of people divorce is acceptable in Ireland in the circumstances in which it is unavoidable.

Abortions do not equal divorce. There are not a massive amount of women going over to England to get a divorce.

Originally posted by Aspro
And the same will go for abortion, eventually. Society will move forward and maybe governments can start tackling the causes behind crisis pregnancies (proper education, proper health and social services, free or at least cheap contraception).
As they say, prevention is better than cure.

Abortion, the cure to pregnancy???

Aspro

Obviously a near 50/50 split isn't good enough of a divide for you

50% of 42% turnout. I think, as Dr. Loon pointed out, if students away from home hadn't been disenfranchised, and everyone got:

1. The information about the referendum with a little more than 2 or 3 days to look at it

2. Their voting cards,

it would have been a much higher rejection. In straw polls carried out in both UCD and by ireland.com it was rejected 70:30

You do not have the choice to kill people!

Now you're just being melodramatic. Justin Barrett isn't your real name, is it? As Deirdre de Barra pointed out, it's interesting how pro-life organisations only ever seem to be interested in pre-natal life. They come from the same right-wing religious origins that swept industrial school child abuse under the carpet for decades for fear of damaging the church. What about those lives?

They split, but not out of losing sight of what they wanted. I'd like to know how you can see the future.

Ireland has moved on. We're no longer dictated to by the church and politicians. Both of these institutions have been discredited. People can now think for themselves.

Abortions do not equal divorce.

You're missing the point. The result of that referendum was that divorce was narrowly passed by a low turnout. People now accept that divorce is a reality.

There are not a massive amount of women going over to England to get a divorce.

So you acknowledge we export the problem - we bury our heads in the sand and say "yeah, it exists, but not in my backyard". That's hypocrisy.

Abortion, the cure to pregnancy???

If you can't argue without resorting to semantics and melodrama, don't bother.

seamus

Originally posted by JustHalf
There is. It's either killing a baby or it isn't. It's fairly black and white. It's only got shades of grey when you claim it's NOT killing a baby.

Well, some people look at it in the opposite way. It's a black-and-white issue until it's claimed that abortion IS killing a baby. As I can see it, both sides use the exact same arguments, just with their negatives reversed.

And yes, prevention is far better. I voted no, but it'll be quite a while before I ever vote yes to abortion. Abortion rarely solves anything. Education, discussion and openness is needed to prevent the need for abortion in the first place. Then we can bring it in. Obviously opennmindedness is something a lot of people in this country are still lacking.

"Bishop bollockhead told me to vote yes, so I'm voting yes." "Would it not be better to read the info and make a decision for yourself, instead of effectively giving your vote to the church?" "No, the church is always right. It's my faith and I'll support it!". I heard this at least 3 times yesterday. :rolleyes:

Aspro

I think Fintan O'Toole is a fluffy liberal but he has some good points to back me up today:)

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2002/0308/4060944343OP08FINTAN.html

suppafly

Polling should been at the weekend so that all of the students and people that work far from home could vote. i think thats why they had it on the wensday so that we couldn't vote. the dirty b***d's

JustHalf

Originally posted by Aspro
it would have been a much higher rejection. In straw polls carried out in both UCD and by ireland.com it was rejected 70:30

"Sample spaces" is something you should read about.

Originally posted by Aspro
Now you're just being melodramatic. Justin Barrett isn't your real name, is it? As Deirdre de Barra pointed out, it's interesting how pro-life organisations only ever seem to be interested in pre-natal life.

I'm pro-life. All life. The comments you mention would be another one of those misdirection tactics pro-abortion-"rights" people use to get their message across.

I haven't seen a single argument for abortion (where the mother's life is not threatened) which isn't based on lies, misdirection or misrepresentation.

My name isn't Justin, by the way. Last name's Barrett though, David Barrett. Who is this Justin person, anyway?

Originally posted by Aspro
They come from the same right-wing religious origins that swept industrial school child abuse under the carpet for decades for fear of damaging the church. What about those lives?

Are you implying that all pro-life hide child abuse?

MISDIRECTION

Originally posted by Aspro
Ireland has moved on. We're no longer dictated to by the church and politicians.

Yes, you are. You are being dictated to by politicians every day -- you just don't realise it.

Politicians aren't some special breed of person, you know. Or do you mean only elected politicians?

Originally posted by Aspro
Both of these institutions have been discredited.

I fail to see how either have been.

Show me a single pro-life campaign poster bearing the words "Catholic Church".

And the government? They asked people to vote.

Originally posted by Aspro
People can now think for themselves.

"Thinking" seems to stop when people reach a point which fits into their current opinion; as opposed to the actual conclusion.

Originally posted by Aspro
So you acknowledge we export the problem - we bury our heads in the sand and say "yeah, it exists, but not in my backyard". That's hypocrisy.

You do know we cannot dictate the laws in other countries?

And if the problem is abortions (which is the only way what you said makes any sense), what solution do you suggest?

Because if you suggest abortion as the solution to abortions, I don't know what to say.

Originally posted by Aspro
If you can't argue without resorting to semantics and melodrama, don't bother.

If you want to argue, please do it with reason as opposed to branding all pro-life people as right-wing extremists who hide cases of child abuse, who only care for life when it's pre-natal life, and who are anti-choice.

Some choices you shouldn't get to make. Like whether or not you should kill people with insufficient justification.

Word to the wise... I'm a liberal!!!

bonkey

Originally posted by seamus
Well, some people look at it in the opposite way. It's a black-and-white issue until it's claimed that abortion IS killing a baby. As I can see it, both sides use the exact same arguments, just with their negatives reversed.

Actually, I think both of those sides are incorrect in their stances.

The most honest (and correct) stance is that we have no firm definitions to say whether or not we are dealing with a "human being" or not. Anyone who claims otherwise is basing their decisions on something other than fact (such as religion).

In the absence of fact, we cannot be sure whether or not it is murder.

So, I ask a simple question. If you're not sure that an action is morally wrong or right, should you disregard the moral question and make the decision on some other basis, or should you say that the best option is to play safe and assume it is immoral.

For me, the pro-choice argument is, at best, amoral, as it either chooses to make a decision which cannot be irrefutably defended , or it simply ignores the issue.

If someone proposed that we change our entire legal system to work off a basis of "guilty till proven innocent", then I'm sure that there would be an outcry. In law, in the presence of reasonable doubt, we assume innocence to avoid the possibility of making tragic and irrevocable mistakes.

Similarly, in a moral dilemma, we should take steps to ensure that we do not choose the wrong decision, by looking at the possibilities. If the unborn is a human being, then morally we are obliged to entitle it to life. If it is not a human being, then there is no such obligation.

Ergo, in the absence of definitive proof one way or the other, it is incumbent on us to assume that it is human to avoid the possiblity of such immoral acts as what would be clsasified as premeditated murder.

Of course, it is all too esy to twist this logic and say "I'm pro-choice. Why? Because if you ask me if an 'aborter' is guilty of murder, I say that there is reasonable doubt, and therefore they are innocent, and therefore the act itself cannot be illegal".

Which, interestingly, is the only strong argument I can see in favour of abortion, and one which I cannot recall seeing in any one of the threads raised on the subject.

Damn but logic is a double-edged sword

jc

Biffa Bacon

Originally posted by Aspro
I think Fintan O'Toole is a fluffy liberal but he has some good points to back me up today:)

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2002/0308/4060944343OP08FINTAN.html

I HATE Fintan O'Toole with a passion usually reserved for paedophiles and concentration camp commandants. He is a smug, self-righteous, intellectually dishonest prat.

koneko

Originally posted by Biffa Bacon

I HATE Fintan O'Toole with a passion usually reserved for paedophiles and concentration camp commandants. He is a smug, self-righteous, intellectually dishonest prat.

Why.. exactly? Because he doesn't share your opinion that everything should be banned? Sure I even remember you a few weeks back saying censorship was a good thing...

Aspro

I HATE Fintan O'Toole with a passion usually reserved for paedophiles and concentration camp commandants. He is a smug, self-righteous, intellectually dishonest prat.

I'm sure he loves you too.:p

Biffa Bacon

In the absence of fact, we cannot be sure whether or not it is murder.

Nonsense. It only matters how you define human life. I can define a banana to be human and thus eating one makes me a murderer. But that's obviously a nonsensical definition. We have to ask if our definitions are reasonable. For example, is it reasonable to say that the foetus only becomes human at a point in time where there is a highly probability that it would be able to survive independently outside the womb? Not to me it's not.

DeVore

50% of 42% turnout. I think, as Dr. Loon pointed out, if students away from home hadn't been disenfranchised, and everyone got:

1. The information about the referendum with a little more than 2 or 3 days to look at it

2. Their voting cards,

and

3. They didnt get high.

DeV.

bonkey

Originally posted by Biffa Bacon

Nonsense. It only matters how you define human life.

I can define a banana to be human and thus eating one makes me a murderer. But that's obviously a nonsensical definition.

We have to ask if our definitions are reasonable.

For example, is it reasonable to say that the foetus only becomes human at a point in time where there is a highly probability that it would be able to survive independently outside the womb? Not to me it's not.

I've highlighted two sentences of your post (three if you count "nonsense" as a sentence).

On one hand you argue that it only matters on how we make our definitions, and then you say that we must ask if our definitions are reasonable.

The problem, which you have completely ignored is that there is no consensus on a single reasonable definition for what constitutes human life. There are myriads, and several popular but unreasonable definitions to boot - by this I mean definitions which are not based on reason, but on other arguments (such as religion).

Now, these various definitions overlap to a large extent, resulting in a situation where we have a somehwat clear definition in that there are certianly things which must be classified as human, and there are things which cannot be classified as human, but there is also a grey area - a border which we cannot agree on. In short - we have a "fuzzy definition".

In fuzzy logic, we have a trinary state - yes, no, and maybe. Often we have varying degrees of maybe. The classification of what constitutes human life must honestly be based on such a trinary classification, given that there is an area where a consensus cannot be reached scientifically or by any other logical means.

Therefore, we remain with an area where, quite simply, we cannot be sure. All we can say is "maybe".

This brings me back to my simple question - in the absence of surity, do we make the morally safe choice, or ignore the moral issue?

jc

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Originally posted by DeVore
and

3. They didnt get high.
DeV.

tut, tut

But I did nearly miss making it before 9pm 'cos i fell asleep when I got home from college.

It wasn't caued by drugs.....Honestly:cool:

Aspro

Originally posted by DeVore
and 3. They didnt get high

smart arse

Lemming

Originally posted by DeVore


and

3. They didnt get high.

DeV.

Now now ... students are law abidding citizens who wouldn't dabble in anything remotely anti-social or unacceptable!

Just thinking back to my college days when ... ioh wait .. I can't remember them .. erm .. NO COMMENT

/disappears quickly

Biffa Bacon

What today’s opinion piece in the Irish Times shows about Fintan O’Toole:

He is intolerant of the beliefs of others:

Hardline conservatism has been vanquished as never before and the kulturkampf of the right has lost its ability to rouse the mass of the electorate on abortion

Note the demonisation of the beliefs of others. I recall him giving out to John Waters on Prime Time a few months ago for using the phrase “feminazis”. And yet he himself isn’t troubled by equating the pro-life campaign with the persecution of Catholics in Bismarck’s Germany in the 19th century. Hypocrisy.

The battered moderates within the Catholic leadership kept quiet. The so-called liberals within Fianna Fáil melted away like snow in the sun.

Anyone supporting the amendment is thus immoderate and illiberal. I also find it ironic that he has the cheek to call anyone a “so-called liberal”.

More broadly, and even more depressingly for conservatives, there is overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of the population simply doesn't want to play the old game of culture wars any more.

Here he dismisses the views of pro-lifers by pretending it is just a “game of culture wars” to them. Obviously this is not true of the pro-choice lobby. Their beliefs are sincere.

…this move from rigid certainty to open-minded ambiguity…

Again, he tries to portray pro-life beliefs as closed-minded and irrational.

Crusading has become a minority taste…On abortion, it (the “conservative movement”) has lost not just the vote but the power to generate the zealotry and emotionalism that frightens politicians into line.

Note how he equates supporting the amendment with crazed religious fundamentalism.

The Catholic culture of consensus is giving way to a Protestant culture of individual belief

More sectarian bigotry here in his description of Catholic and Protestant “culture”. But of course, in Fintan’s world, it’s OK to be prejudiced against Catholics.

Once made, however hesitantly, the choice between the moral complexity of the real world and the absolute certainty of abstract principle cannot be unmade.

i.e. pro-lifers are not living in the real world and are only concerned with “abstract principles”.


He is self-righteous, in that he portrays conservatives as a united, monolithic, malevolent force that has been “vanquished” by the rejection of this amendment:

For the first time on a moral issue, the combined forces of Fianna Fáil and the Catholic Church have been beaten. Never before has the electorate refused to yield before the full force of Rome and the Republican Party, to the crozier and the ministerial Merc… In the first abortion and divorce referendums of the 1980s, the party and the pulpit were closely allied and swept all before them… The old monolith can no longer stand up to the new diversity of opinion… the old monolith has lost its passion… once-invincible fusion of nationalism and Catholicism.

Of course the point of all this is because it lets him pretend he isn’t an intolerant phony liberal. It’s as if the Catholic Church and Fianna Fáil had power independently of the support of the people.

What all of this means, quite simply, is that the conservative counter-revolution is over.

What conservative counter-revolution is that? What revolution did we have in the first place?

Abortion, let us remember, was the battleground that the conservatives themselves chose for their last stand. They identified it as the symbolic issue on which Ireland would opt out of the liberal, secular trend of the developed world.
They hoped that a victory in this battle would ultimately turn the tide.

When did you make that up Fintan? Just now? When did anyone claim any such thing?

He dishonestly interprets the facts just to suit his cause:

For all the ambiguities which must complicate any interpretation of yesterday's knife-edge vote, at least one thing is clear. For the first time on a moral issue, the combined forces of Fianna Fáil and the Catholic Church have been beaten.

And yet note the unambiguity of the conclusions he draws throughout the rest of the article!

Just how big becomes obvious when we remember that what characterised Irish identity for perhaps the last 200 years was the fusion of politics and religion.

Is he joking? What about the struggle for independence? Emigration? The Irish language and culture? Of course, the real reason he makes this idiotic claim is because he wants to pretend that the referendum result is the most important thing that’s happened in Ireland for the past 200 years.

This fusion is what has made sectarianism so potent.

Wrong again Fintan. Political affiliation is what is important, i.e. unionist or nationalist, in the politics of the North. Sectarianism is only an issue because political and religious affiliation are so closely aligned, for historical reasons. It’s not a case of your religion determining your politics or vice versa.

It is what made it possible for the church to control the framework of politics in independent Ireland.

The church controlled and maintained the division between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael did it? It controlled the Labour party? Get real.

It is almost a mathematical rule, indeed, that the higher the Yes vote in the constituency, the lower the turnout.
What this suggests is that abortion, which was until recently the great emotive cause of conservative Ireland, has simply lost its ability to rally the troops. Whereas in the past conservatives were full of energy and fervour while liberals tended to live up to their "wishy-washy" stereotype, the roles are now reversed.
The urban No voters were simply more fired up than their conservative rural counterparts.

This is pure speculation. He ignores the possibility that the bad weather on Wednesday would have made it harder for people in rural areas to get out and vote. And the fact that many pro-life people also voted No.

The reality is that a more conservative proposal, outlawing abortion from the moment of conception, would almost certainly have been defeated by a much larger margin.

I have to admit that he provided very convincing statistics to back up this claim. Oh wait, no, now that I think about it, he actually provided no evidence whatsoever.

Easily the biggest category of the electorate is that which couldn't be bothered to express an opinion on the proposal. It doesn't believe that changing the Constitution changes behaviour. It may not like abortion very much, but it's not too pushed either way. It is resigned to the way we are, as a fairly typical western European society, and can't see much to get outraged about.

He now proceeds to read the mind of the 60% or so of the electorate that didn’t vote.

YESTERDAY'S results confirm the complete disintegration of that near-consensus that abortion is never justified.

Yes, I would call a fifty-fifty split a complete disintegration all right.

Almost no one outside the very small Youth Defence tendency now believes that the right answer is "never".

Another unsubstantiated and undefined claim, made solely because it suits his own agenda.

A part of this move from rigid certainty to open-minded ambiguity is the gradual relaxation of the tensions between urban and rural Ireland.
This may seem an odd point to make in the context of a vote which was overwhelmingly shaped by that very division. But a closer look at the individual results suggest that while the urban/rural is still very real, it is slowly being washed away.

No, Fintan, you cannot deduce trends from a data set taken at a single point in time.

What other issue does the conservative movement have to campaign on?
It has completely given up the fight on contraception.
It knows that there is no hope of banning divorce again.

How about abortion Fintan?

If yesterday's vote tells us anything about ourselves, it is that we are no longer ashamed of feeling uncertain and even confused about issues that do not lend themselves to absolute truths.

It doesn’t tell us jack about ourselves. I hate that kind of nonsense, as if the electorate is some kind of single-minded entity.

What really annoys me about this guy is that he wouldn’t have made these lofty claims if the vote had gone half a percent the other way. And he still doesn’t have the balls to spell out and justify what he thinks the law on abortion should be.

Biffa Bacon

Sure I even remember you a few weeks back saying censorship was a good thing...

Yes I did. And I don't recall anyone challenging my points.

JustHalf

Biffa! I want to give you a column.

"<real name here>'s whiny intolerant so-called liberal of the week"

Excellent work, btw.

The Gopher

Has anybody noticed that countries where the gov sees abortion as a civillised practice like UK,France rest of EU etc are the same places that are always complaining about executions in then states?Ah yes it makes sense-its fine to kill babies but its evil to kill vile adult murderers?Isnt society great?

Biffa Bacon

The problem, which you have completely ignored is that there is no consensus on a single reasonable definition for what constitutes human life.

I don't see that that is a problem. If I am satisfied that my definition of what constitutes human life is reasonable and consistent then there is no confusion on my part on when life begins. Other people's definitions don't matter to me.

The classification of what constitutes human life must honestly be based on such a trinary classification, given that there is an area where a consensus cannot be reached scientifically or by any other logical means.

Classifying what constitutes human life is entirely subjective, there is no scientific "truth" to be found. Scientists might be able to discover at what stage does a foetus feel pain, become conscious etc., but it cannot discover what constitutes human life since that is based on a subjective definition. Science cannot "discover" that you or I are human independently of what we define "human" to be. So the trinary classification you speak of is again just a product of definitions, not scientific truth.

Cork

I think our media are always looking at the doom & gloom aspects. We always forget about things like the Good Friday Agreement. What do we focus in on - Postage Stamping by a political Party.

This country had a chance to put abortion off the agenda.

People were said by a coalition of Sinn Fein, FG and Labour (including ex membrs of DL)

Typedef

God, sometimes it is really repetitive to hear self exponenciating 'liberals' brandish anyone who disagrees with their insular and self supermecist views as religious fundamentalists and conservatives. It is in fact cultrually and religously racist and biased for Mr O'Toole to suggest that the 'conservative elements' of society have been vanquished.
I voted yes, I used to be a member of the socialist workers movement, I moderate a forum called 'Green Issues'.
Now this may not sit too pretty with Mr O'Toole's closed world view, but I would contend that the printing of the Irish Times contributes to deforestation and the fact that he writes for that paper and thus sells more papers, consequently contributes to deforestation.
Therefore Mr O'Toole would have 'us' believe that in his self proclaimed Republic of Liberal enlightenment where 'Liberals' voted no, that activities that contribute to massive scale deforestation are intrinsically 'Liberal' and thus that people of an anit-deforestation view and opinion are 'conservative'.
Therefore by the implied reasoning of Mr O'Toole the current American administration who call their system of governance 'Compassionate Conservatism' are in fact Liberals in that is has redrafted bills to do with logging in the US to make it 'easier' for more logging to take place. http://www.citizenworks.org/env-deforestation.html

Now I know Prince Charles is an environmentalist, so does that make all environmentalists royal? Certainly not, therefore does that make all yes voters conservative by the criteria epoused above, nope? Therefore is what Mr O'Toole has said irredemably jaundiced and intellectually self gratifying, I think so.

My point being that a true liberal realises that there can be a diversity of opinions and dissent on a miasma of topics without the puritanical ascription of socio-political tendancy to arbitrarily selected section of society (n), where n equals people who oppose Fintan O'Tooles closed world view on 'what liberalism is'.