Inching Forward

IT was in many ways a good week in Irish political life. Within two days, two major reports were published and in both cases you d have to say that their authors did well.
In the Republic, the Government finally published its long-awaited Green Paper on Abortion. Not everyone was positive in their response. Ivana Bacik of the Dublin Abortion Rights Group described it as thoughtful, responsible and considered: a very good document. In contrast while Caroline Simmons of the Pro-Life Campaign acknowledged that the Green Paper was a thoughtful document, she added quickly that it was only a discussion paper, a starting point.
It was interesting that the response from pro-choice lobbyists was for once positive. On the one hand, the Green Paper included among the options it set out, abortion on request an important official acknowledgement that this must be considered as a possible long-term outcome of the abortion debate. On the other, the paper offered little comfort to those in favour of an absolute ban. The issues were teased out in some detail, but there seemed to be no willingness, among those on the Government sub-committee which produced the Paper, to attempt to mirror, in either the Constitution or in legislation, the Catholic distinction between so-called direct and indirect abortion.
The proponents of a new constitutional amendment were given some further food for thought. It is not easy, the Green Paper suggests, to come up with a satisfactory definition of unborn : for example, if it is defined as being from the moment of conception , then the morning after pill would be verboten. Now while this might be music to the ears of the Anti-Abortion campaign, there is a question of whether it would be acceptable to the population at large, and to sexually active women in particular.
My own view is that unborn should of course be taken to cover anything from the twinkle in the eye of prospective lovers from the first moment it becomes clear that they re going to end up making the beast with two backs together onwards. Indeed it should probably include every sperm that s ever been generated because surely, like the embryo, this is a life-form designed by God to fulfil its destiny by being born.
But enough of this. There are many Irish people who are cringing at the prospect of the media becoming overheated, as the debate turns into an overwrought, emotional exercise and the insults and abuse begin to flow. Now I can t say that I m especially thrilled at the prospect of watching your average pro-life campaigner frothing at the mouth on television but neither is it reasonable simply to wish that the abortion issue would quietly go away.
Six thousand Irish women are known to travel to Britain every year to have abortions. The right thing to do is to legislate to allow these women to have abortions in Ireland and then to do everything possible to minimise the need for abortion: by putting more effective sex education programmes in place, by making access to contraception easier, by supporting unmarried parents and their children and finally by greatly strengthening the supports available to women with crisis pregnancies.
No one wants abortion. No one likes it. But it must be available as an option for all women because it is unconscionable that any society would say to any woman: you must carry that pregnancy for seven months, or eight months more, irrespective of the circumstances in which conception occurred, and irrespective of the impact which doing so might have on you, on your health or on your life.
Abortion is often the best decision, or the right decision and it is a woman s right to choose it. The Green Paper at least suggests that we re a little closer to acknowledging that.
Meanwhile, in the North, the Patten Report on the future of policing in Northern Ireland was also published last week.
When his name was first announced by Tony Blair, Chris Patten may have seemed like an odd choice to take on this task. As a former chairman of the Conservative Party, it might have been assumed that his sympathies would automatically lie with Unionism, and as a consequence that his instincts would be to preserve the status quo.
It is all the more informative, then, that the most hostile reaction to the Patten Report has come from the Unionist parties. The document is hardly radical but in the spirit of a highly intelligent and supremely competent administrator, Patten has produced what is clearly a decent balance between competing Unionist and Nationalist agendas, while also leaving the door open to an ongoing process of change and review.
In his response to Unionist criticisms, Patten has emerged as a genuine voice for sanity. In an interview with Frank Millar in The Irish Times, he spelt out fundamentals about the Belfast Agreement that Unionists have been trying to run away from for months now. Coming from a Conservative, this was strong stuff.
It seemed to me what was settled in the agreement was that the constitutional position should be determined democratically, he said. But in return for making that manifest, I d understood nationalists and republicans were offered two things. First, parity of esteem and recognition that there are two traditions in Northern Ireland, and that one shouldn t be seen (whether it is a justified observation or not) to be lording it over the other.
And secondly, specific institutions of government were created to reflect that, while nationalists and republicans under the agreement are obliged to demonstrate their commitment to the democratic process, they re not obliged to owe their primary loyalty to the institutions of State.
Throughout, the message from Patten was clear: people who signed up to it must remain true to the spirit of the Belfast Agreement. Because if they don t, who knows how terrible the consequences might be? Ulster can no longer afford simply to say no.
If Chris Patten s intervention brings Unionism even half to its senses, then his contribution will have been immense. And if not? Well, people would do well to be aware that the clock doesn t stop ticking. n