The Abortion Bill vote…

It almost seems petty to consider who voted and who didn’t on the Abortion Bill this week. But, it’s an exercise with some utility.

First up, consider that ten of the Technical Group, and four of the ULA (out of five), voted for the Bill. Nine of SF’s 14 voted (though Pearse Doherty was at the funeral of his father). Patrick Nulty, who appears to be becoming a one man tribune of a strand of Labour thinking that has now all but vanished also voted for it. I can’t divine any great rural/urban divide in SF, or pro-choice/anti-abortion divide either. TDs who might seem to fit in either camps voted for the Bill.

Of the Technical Group, Stephen Donnelly voted for the Bill, and that great social liberal, Shane Ross? And what of Thomas Pringle? Finian McGrath was missing in action too, as was Tom Fleming – perhaps less unexpectedly.

Now those who voted against. It’s odd to read through the list and see Quinn, Gilmore, White and Ferris and so on and so forth. Not so odd to see the massed ranks of Fine Gael. And not at all odd to see Noel Grealish there. Mattie McGrath, to be entirely fair, pinned his colours to the mask and voted against. No sign of Michael Healy-Rae. But what of Tommy Broughan who voted against?

So, what does this mean. I think smiffy raised an important point for the future when noting that in a way it was no bad thing that the LP had used the whip on its TDs in the sense that further down the line should legislation be forthcoming the same approach can be imposed by the LP to ensure compliance with such legislation.

Still… whether such legislation does appear is a most interesting question, and what of Fine Gael in all this – something that tends to be forgotten in all the concentration on the Labour Party. From watching the debates that did not seem like a party eager to legislate or to support even minimal access to abortion in extremis. And that, not the LP, is the mountain that ultimately has to be climbed. Even had every single LP TD voted for the measure it would still have fallen and we know that not every LP TD would vote for the measure.

Speaking of which, to be frank the most specious arguments of the week came not from those with an avowed anti-abortion belief. Overwhelmingly they were honest about their line even if some of the justifications (as with McGrath) were factually incorrect. Less good can be said about some of those who were clearly unable to work out should they be slightly agin or slightly for even if they voted against. And least good can be said about the supposed radical ‘this does not go far enough’ crew in the LP who ignored entirely the substance of the Bill, the context within which it was produced and the constraints placed upon it by that context.

So, whatever else, an interesting day or two’s work and enormous credit to Daly, Collins and Wallace for their work.