The Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland (previously bill no. 29 of 2018) is an amendment to the Constitution of Ireland which permits the Oireachtas to legislate for abortion. The constitution had previously prohibited abortion unless there was a serious risk to the life of the mother.
The proposal is often described as the Repeal of the Eighth Amendment, referring to the 1983 constitutional amendment which guaranteed the right to life of fetuses, making abortion illegal unless the pregnancy was life-threatening. The 2018 amendment replaces Article 40.3.3° of the Constitution, which was added in 1983 and amended in 1992.
The bill was introduced to the Oireachtas on 9 March 2018 by the Fine Gael minority coalition government, and completed its passage through both houses on 27 March 2018. It was put to a referendum on 25 May 2018 and approved by 66.4% of voters. The amendment took effect once signed into law by President Michael D. Higgins on 18 September 2018.
Background
The British Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which made "unlawful procurement of a miscarriage" a crime, remained in force after Irish independence in 1922. The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution adopted in 1983, which declares "the right to life of the unborn ... equal [to the] right to life of the mother", was instigated by the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign for fear that the 1861 prohibition might be weakened by liberal legislators or activist judges. In 1992, Supreme Court ruled in the "X case" (Attorney General v. X) that abortion is permitted where pregnancy threatens a woman's life, including by risk of suicide. No regulatory framework within the limited scope of the X case judgement was passed until the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013, impelled by A, B and C v Ireland (2010) in the European Court of Human Rights and death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012 after miscarriage. The 2013 Act repealed the 1861 Act, and makes "destruction of unborn human life" a crime. In the three years 2014–2016, a total of 77 legal abortions were performed under the 2013 Act.
Illegal surgical abortions in Ireland have been practically unknown since the UK's Abortion Act 1967 allowed Irish women to travel to Great Britain for a legal abortion. The 13th and 14th amendments to the constitution, passed in 1992 after the X case, guarantee the right to information about foreign abortions and to travel abroad for an abortion. The number of women at UK abortion clinics giving Irish addresses peaked at 6,673 in 2001, and was 3,265 in 2016. The decline is partly due to unregulated use of abortion pills illegally delivered from online pharmacies.
While left-wing parties and feminists opposed the 1983 amendment, and have advocated its repeal, this was not supported by the two largest parties for most of the interim: Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael. In the 2010s, while both parties' leadership opposed broad liberalisation, some accepted the argument for abortion in cases like fatal foetal abnormalities and pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, which are not permitted by the 1983 amendment. These became the focus of campaigning after the 2013 Act. The Abortion Rights Campaign, a pro-choice alliance formed in 2012, holds an annual "March for Choice" in Dublin. Anti-abortion groups have countered with a "Rally for Life". In the run up to the 2016 general election, a number of parties committed to a referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment (Labour, Green Party, Social Democrats, Sinn Féin, and Workers' Party) and a group of feminist law academics published model legislation to show what a post-Eighth Amendment abortion law could look like.