How to do a referendum?





It hasn’t been perfect but after the abortion referendum celebrated the last 25th of May there are some lessons that we can learn. This election date was a Taoiseach’s Leo Varadkar campaign promise. According to his word, he called the Irish people to the polls after his government established a committee that present the basic lines that now the Irish government will must develop. 

Those basic lines (legal abortion until 12 weeks and until 24 weeks in extreme cases) were use by the LOVE BOTH campaign, that supported the permanence of the 8th amendment in the Irish Constitution. The NO side argue the new conditions were too extreme and once deleted the 8th amendment, there wasn’t turn back. The big success of the referendum is the high implication of the society in this issue, even when the 8th amendment was adopted only 35 years before. 

The Irish people have demonstrated how fast the societies are changing. Only three years before the island celebrated another referendum about the gay marriage that was supported by the majority. The politics point has been present but it hasn’t been the starring actor in a campaign decided by the testimonies of women that have suffered dramatic experiences related to this issue. 

Any political party were clearly positioned in the NO side, while the government’s party and the Sinn Feinn (third party in the parliament support the repeal of the 8th amendment. 




The most curious case has been the one of the first opposition party that had a group of TD’S in the NO side while his leader support the YES side. The debate wasn’t monopolized by politics; the main big arguments came from people from the civil society, obstetricians and doctors among others. 

Perhaps the big success is the high participation especially of the young people, that in some cases travelled towards they origin country to vote. According to a RTE TV analyst maybe those young women have broken the stigma that prevented talking about these issues with friends or family and according to her words “the talks about personal cases in those family meetings were the key that bring the victory for the YES side”. 

Ubicación: Dublin, Ireland

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