The Irish Abortion Referendum

i am home in dub ned

tomorrow is another day

Clarity. (I will not be here tomorrow, sadly, but if you're around past Tuesday, drop a line.)

off towards oregon!

she has a tight tour schedule this time else youd have gotten a mail weeks ago, rest assured

All good. Back to the referendum news.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeEu6-wWkAMig-I.jpg

RTE EXIT POLL: YES 69.4% #8thRef

— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) May 25, 2018

thw hateful 8th indeed

my mate has been heavily involved in the campaign, so pleased for her. cilliam murphy sent the campaign office a cake. good lad.

* cillian

https://twitter.com/ellenmcoyne/status/10001278646987366
This is such an interesting point

The citizens assembly was 64%, it was portrayed as an unrepresentative anomaly.

— Ellen Coyne (@ellenmcoyne) May 25, 2018

69.4%

sorry but

NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE

The AMOUNT of replies to that last tweet simply saying ‘nice’. Trey Parker and Matt Stone have a lot to answer for…

— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) May 25, 2018

Thank you Ireland for voting well.

well 8th you brought me a very nice half-sister, conceived when my mum was 14, in what would be considered an incident of statutory rape and child abuse under current UK laws, so yeah you can fuck right off forever now, please!

I love my stupid country

Well done folks

Good.

oh it gets better and better

As reported by @morningireland,
Yes vote: Fine Gael - 74%, Sinn Fein - 74%, Labour - 80%, Greens - 88%, Fianna Fail - 49% #RepealedThe8th

— Delna (@Delna_42) May 26, 2018

may it crush them again

58% Yes in Roscommon.

It's nice to wake up to a referendum result that isn't complete shit. Good work Ireland.

I love my stupid county

― Number None, Friday, 25 May 2018 23:49 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tsk

Good man yourself, Ireland

Took you till 18 years into the 21st century mind you.

Glad to hear the referendum went the right way. Hope there isn't anything that the committed No people can do to undermine this first step.
Do know that the Yes movement do view it as the first of several steps that need to be taken before they see things as just.

Donegal trying to spoil the party, count still going on.

Hope there isn't anything that the committed No people can do to undermine this first step.

Because of the size of the margin, the government is going to move quickly on this. Opposing TDs have already indicated they will support the legislation.

No crowd could mount a legal challenge but it’s going to look desperate given how soundly they were beaten. It would take a substantial effort to have public opinion reverse on this now to the point they ever decided to have a vote on it again. The 8th was successful for so long because the right organised and planned for it, knowing that the level of constitutional protection would be difficult to overturn.

Thinking of Mary Robinson today. She opposed the original referendum in 1983, and she was David Norris’s counsel. So ahead of the times.

Donegal has a higher % of young people leave home than any other and it is cut off from the rest of the country (no rail connections). They will have had a higher percentage of elderly voters as a result. I read also that part of the country is now part of Sligo-Leitrim after boundaries changed.

Attn journalists ! When you're talking about Donegal as a county do add in the 63% of South Donegal that has voted Yes that was taken out of our constituency #justiceforDonegal #Donegal #RepealedThe8th

— Daithí for Yes (@Daithionaroll) May 26, 2018

how did Kerry vote?

that question could be about the cognitive ability or voting results.

Their official count isn’t in yet but Yes. Saw reports of people putting miraculous medals in with the ballot papers - hope that counts as a spoiled vote.

Miraculous medals and novena prayers amongst ballot papers in one of the boxes from Killarney.#Kerry #8thRef pic.twitter.com/vPNU7PLttv

— Seán Mac an tSíthigh (@Buailtin) May 26, 2018

lol!

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/296/006/e90.gif

amazing

Well turned out

Well done!!!!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeI69U7X0AExN9d.jpg

Referendums are suddenly back in fashion, not least among those who have spent the past two years trying to discredit one https://t.co/ZBKSB7AkVX

— Matthew Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) May 27, 2018

Eat the book guy made several inane tweets comparing this to Brexit (everything is Brexit!) and got owned several times in the replies.

Someone referenced article 46 of our constitution, which means that the constitution can only be amended with a referendum, and he huffily dismissed it as “constitutional subtleties”! He should print his tweets off and eat them.

he is getting bodied in the replies lmao

this is heaping a lot of pressure on the self-confessed strong + stable feminist in no.10 as well, it's all good!

There's a great exchange from a month or so back where Carol Cadwalladr asks Goodwin why he's spent the past year slagging off her Cambridge Analytica story only to suddenly turn up in it.

So if i'm thinking right, what has been achieved by the referendum is that a veto on changing the law apropos abortion has been lifted and what can be said in public has been changed. The actual law that is being worked towards is only present i a sketched out form taht needs to go through debate in the Dail which could take as long as it takes. & only then will things be getting towards what the Yes side want.
& I'm not sure tow aht extent the No side can undermine all the stages up to a more stable end which the Yes side will want to be amended regularly since the heavily compromised end point is not going to where they want things to get to.

Hope enough momentum has been picked up and doesn't dissipate before we wind up at a point that resembles the 21st century more closely.
Already hearing the church complaining and hearing about the No side acting like victims.

and what can be said in public has been changed.
>
That is to say that several people have said during the campaign that it is only now possible to talk about abortion in public and actually refer to it as that.

& that the one thing the referendum has achieved without further legislative work is that the amendment which prevented any change has now been lifted which is a stage before actual change. & now the more conservative elements of the dail can try to delay any actual change from happening by keeping legislation being argued over as long as possible.

What do your sources think happened to people who said the word in public?

(This could have gone in the bad Guardian thread, but really there should be a collected bad take repository!)

Laurie Penny published a now locked piece about the referendum, it sounds like an absolute car crash. Irish twitter users have been queuing up to critique it. So much cringe. She actually used her own Irish background to deflect from the fact that she doesn’t know the difference between the Taoiseach and the Dáil!

This thread captures the worst of it:

I wrote a lot of stuff on my IG story about how bad I think this Laurie Penny article (https://t.co/4cPGQK2DKE) is, then remembered Twitter is meant to be the one for opinions.

so:

— thot experiment (@NaoiseDolan) May 28, 2018

In fairness, Laurie is pretty aware that she's fucked up:

https://twitter.com/PennyRed

She actually used her own Irish background to deflect from the fact that she doesn’t know the difference between the Taoiseach and the Dáil!

That is not something she did, no.

Yes, anyone can go on her timeline and see shite like this:

Because I’ve learned to my cost that there are some people for whom only deleting my whole account and never writing anything again would ever be enough.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) May 29, 2018

Although I did ungenerously misrepresent the point, so yes, you’re right on that. Can’t imagine what made me view her so ungenerously!

Yeah, that is an unfortunate feature of her writing these days - to be honest any idea that starts with "I was hanging around with Amanda Palmer and she said" is unlikely to go anywhere good.