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Ireland quietly comes to terms with change after abortion vote

Ag Reuters

DUBLIN: Irish people paid homage on Sunday to an Indian immigrant woman whose death inspired a historic vote to repeal Ireland´s strict abortion laws while the Catholic Church rued the outcome saying it showed indifference to its teachings.

In a referendum on Friday, the once deeply Catholic nation voted to scrap a prohibition on abortion by a margin of two-to-one, a landslide victory that astonished campaigners as citizens of every age and background demanded the change they had spent decades fighting for. The vote overturns a law which, for decades, has forced over 3,000 women to travel to Britain each year for terminations that they could not legally have in their own country.

“Yes” campaigners had argued that with pills now being bought illegally online abortion was already a reality in Ireland. Hundreds of people on Sunday continued to leave flowers and candles at a large mural in Dublin of Savita Halappanaar, the 31-year-old Indian whose death in 2012 from a septic miscarriage after being refused a termination spurred lawmakers into action. Katy Gaffney, a 24-year-old baker who travelled home to Dublin from Berlin to vote, stood silently in front of the makeshift memorial crying. “I am relieved but devastated that it had to come to this,” she said. Others, many with tears in their eyes, pinned messages to the wall. One read: “I´m so sorry this happened to you before the country woke up. My vote was for you. “ Another: “I´m sorry we let you down. It won´t be in vain.”