Ireland Votes Against Proposed Changes About Family And Women In Constitution

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar admitted defeat on Saturday as two amendments to the constitution he backed, which would have widened the definition of family and eliminated language referring to a woman’s role in the home, were set to be rejected, news agency Associated Press (AP) reported. Varadkar, who pushed the vote to codify gender equality in the constitution by deleting “very old-fashioned language” and attempting to address the reality of modern family life, said that voters had dealt “two wallops” to the government.

“Clearly we got it wrong. While the old adage is that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, I think when you lose by this kind of margin, there are a lot of people who got this wrong and I am certainly one of them,” he was quoted as saying by AP in its report. 

Opposition stated that the amendments were poorly drafted, and voters expressed confusion about the options, which some thought would result in unanticipated consequences.

The referendum was seen as part of Ireland’s transition from a conservative, predominantly Roman Catholic country where divorce and abortion were outlawed to a more diversified and socially liberal one. According to the Central Statistics Office, the proportion of Catholic citizens has fallen from 94.9% in 1961 to 69% in 2022.

The societal shift has been mirrored in a succession of revisions to the Irish Constitution, which goes back to 1937, though the nation was not officially known as the Republic of Ireland until 1949. In a 1995 referendum, Irish people legalized divorce, supported same-sex marriage in a 2015 ballot, and removed abortion restrictions in 2018.

What Are Two Proposed Ammedments To Ireland’s Constitution?

The first question addressed a provision of the constitution that promises to safeguard the family as the basic unit of society. Voters were urged to delete a reference to marriage as the basis “on which the family is founded” and replace it with a phrase stating that families can be founded “on marriage or other durable relationships.” If ratified, it would have been the 39th amendment to the Constitution.

A proposed 40th amendment would have deleted a reference to a woman’s role in the home as a common good that the state could not supply, as well as a phrase stating that mothers should not be obliged to work out of economic need if it would interfere with their domestic obligations. It would have included a language stating that the state shall work to encourage “the provision of care by members of a family to one another.”