A good night for NO and a failure of the YES campaign?

I was passing by Leinster House today at lunch and some carry-on there was there. The crew who think it’s clever to have giant images of what they say are aborted foetuses were outside – as was a truck which went around the block repeatedly with the same imagery. This may be unfair of me, but they looked American, at least some of them. Meanwhile a courageous group had large white sections of cloth on poles which they were sensibly using to mask the posters as best as was possible. Around the same time a large cohort of PBP appeared as well, I think to mask the first lot. A couple of Gardai looked on all the while. Whatever else it looked completely insane on the part of the anti-abortion lot and I can’t imagine that many people were persuaded by that sort of stuff. Anyone else see it?

Anyhow, interesting, if curious analysis of recent events in the campaign. Take Pat Leahy in the IT who argues that:

Last night’s televised debate on the abortion referendum has provided a significant fillip to a No campaign that was desperately in need of one.
Very strong viewing figures for the programme on RTÉ will further encourage anti-Repeal campaigners as the campaign heads for its decisive final week.

Why the anti-Repeal side?

The No side was better prepared and better organised for the debate and in Maria Steen of the Iona Institute, they had the best performer on the night. The No supporters in the audience were more enthusiastic for their side’s contributions, and antagonistic to the Yes side’s speakers. In a live environment, this matters: the Yes panellists looked quite taken aback for much of the debate.
This was especially so for Dr Peter Boylan, the obstetrician who has been one of the most prominent Yes campaigners so far. Confronted by an audience that was partially hostile, another obstetrician and the debating skills of Ms Steen, Boylan had a rough ride last night.

Another way of looking at that might be similar to that of the stunt outside Leinster House. That’s the kind of thing that makes people recoil – I saw it myself, from what is seen as offensive on many different levels. Indeed Leahy elsewhere argued precisely that the ‘abortion as murder’ approach didn’t work for the NO side and in this piece notes:

It also means that a lot of voters will have seen a good night for the No campaign.
But will it help them reach the undecided and soft Yes voters they need to talk to? Will it help them change minds? We will know for sure when the next round of polls arrive, but many of the messages that the No side conveyed strongly last night were messages that will resonate strongly with convinced anti-abortion voters – rather than with the crucial middle-ground undecided and soft repealer voters. Last night’s debate sometimes had the feel of a rally for the No side – not an exercise which will win hearts and minds.

And the response of some in the audience on the NO side appeared to be far far too energetic for the subject.

Meanwhile the IT had a report on Paschal Donohoe who attended a Repeal meeting in Dublin Central. Sarah Bardon reports it as follows:

The next person was a young woman who was voting Yes. Her friends were concerned that the grounds of mental health would be abused to allow for a more liberal regime in Ireland. The comparisons to the UK were also raised.
She was told the comparisons to the UK did not stand up to scrutiny. Britain is an outlier in terms of its abortion regime and was not in sync with the majority of countries. Here the risk to the woman’s mental health must be causing demonstrable harm to allow a termination, she was told.

Seems reasonable.

Her question was followed by a No voter. He wanted to know what Donohoe believed the definition of termination of a pregnancy was. To him, it was the destruction of the life of the unborn.
Donohoe responded. He did not believe a foetus of up to 12 weeks was comparable to the life of the woman. The constituent wanted support for pregnant women, not abortion.
The Minister for Finance was sorry the two had reached different positions. But he was clear that there was a balance to be achieved and his was a position was the right one for women.

Bardon concludes:

This is, of course, a Snapchat of the debate but it shows the same issues are being consistently raised. The fact they are still for discussion, 10 days away from the vote, shows a failure by those encouraging change to explain their message to voters and the impact of an effective campaign by the No side.

I may well be wrong, but I wonder if that is an entirely fair analysis of the dynamic at work. For a start it appears to assume that those raising the questions are seeking to have their minds changed.

But I don’t think that’s the case in many instances. There are those who are undecided, but those who are clearly voting Yes or No are in a different camp entirely. What might be more useful would be to hear those who genuinely are undecided and why. But even then I suspect that this issue is, like many others, one where many different aspects, emotion, sometimes religious belief, the ‘ick’ factor some have, and so on all impinge.

It would be bizarre, at this stage, for a convinced NO voter to not believe what they believe. And likewise for a convinced YES voter. Discussion may change that for some, but I suspect for most attitudes are now deeply rooted – after so many decades and so many referendums it would be curious if they were not. And just on a tangent I find the dynamic we saw at the Oireachtas Committee in terms of those who went in holding ‘pro-life’ views who changed to support the provision of abortion absolutely fascinating. One or two of those TDs acknowledged they had little knowledge of the area even though they believed themselves to be anti-abortion before hand. So clearly attitudes are open to change, but not everyone is going to have the immersive experience of that Committee. We rarely enough see minds changing in politics, but this is one instance where they clearly did – I suspect that this points to why the NO campaign has been pulling back, even arguably against its own best interests, to quite hard-edged slogans and imagery because to allow for complexity is to see doubt and contingency enter into the picture.

In any event I find the idea that somehow it would be possible to come to a settled situation where these questions were not being discussed highly improbable. Win or lose on May 25th this issue isn’t going to go away. The discussion, or more accurately the disagreement, isn’t going to be resolved. However, that doesn’t mean that the dispensation cannot be changed in a progressive direction, and let’s hope the 25th represents that.