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On Friday, the south of Ireland went to the polls to vote in a referendum on whether to remove the 8th amendment to the constitution. This amendment was passed in a 1983 referendum and essentially banned abortion in Ireland. When something is in the constitution it means it overrides parliament. So no parliament in the south could legislate to make the law any more liberal. The most socially reactionary forces in Irish society, backed by reactionary religious groups and money from the States, threw everything they had into trying to get a No vote, thus maintaining the 8th amendment. But the Yes vote, for Repeal, had the numbers on the ground, with heaps and heaps of young people getting involved and thousands of young people flying back home to vote - as in the gay marriage referendum of 2015, the vast majorioty of those who flew back to vote were Yes voters. Exit polls from RTE (the state broadcaster) indicate a big, big win for the Yes vote. Current indications are that Dublin voted as much as 77-23 for Repeal and across the south the Repeal vote could be as high as 68-69% (Dublin always leads the way on these things; it's one of the most progressive cities in the world in my view; a chunk of the big hardcore working class areas of Dublin voted 78,79, 80 percent in favour of gay marriage in 2015, for instance). It is a massive victory for women's rights, although the struggle now starts for what kind of law the parliament will enact. (I suspect the exit polls don't include many rural polling booths, so my guess is that the fional result won't be quite so big, but still very big.) I recently interviewed a longtime working class activist on the referendum. See here; https://rdln.wordpress.com/2018/05/22/irelands-abortion-referendum-interview-with-eirigi-activist-cat-inglis/ And for a look at changes in southern irish society, here's something I wrote back in 2015 around the time of the same-sex marriage referendum: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/irish-society-and-politics-and-the-referendum-on-gay-marriage/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
