Ireland's Social Revolution: From Celtic Vatican to Socially Liberal

The Republic of Ireland hold's two firsts now, The first country to legalise Same-sex marriage by popular vote and now the first to repeal a ban on Abortions. These momentous referendum's that have occurred in the past 10 years show that Social opinions are changing in Ireland and for the better. Ireland was a strongly catholic society, both religiously and Socially, They stuck by every word the catholic church said, if the Vatican was against abortion, Ireland was against it, if the Vatican was against drinking water, Ireland would've been against drinking water. The relationship with the Catholic Church isn't dying but the type of Relationship is changing. Over the past 10 years there has been a drop in people identifying themselves as Catholic in Ireland but this doesn't mean that Catholicism isn't completely out of the market of ideas in Ireland.

The Republic of Ireland's Politics is one of pure unfiltered religion, both on the left and the right. Fine Gael and Fine Fail have a majority Catholic supporter's as well as the left's Sinn Fein, the 3 main parties in Ireland. Although Sinn Fein have been more progressive on social issues such as Same-sex Marriage and Abortions, the two majority parties that are Fine Gael and Fine Fail have had a shaky relationship with such pressing social matters as for the most part both parties have religious reasons to be against both. It has remained this way since the election of Leo Varadkar, Ireland's first openly gay Taoiseach (prime minister). Varadkar sent a message to many Conservatives in Ireland that Homosexuality was accepted and that a religious man could be open about his Homosexuality, this opened the gates for Social opinion change among Irish Catholics, specifically Conservative Catholics.

From what was reported about the referendum on the repeal of the Abortion ban, most of the "no" talking points were religious based, but given the conversations that occurred as part of the Same-sex marriage referendum many Irish people, even Irish Catholics weren't buying into the religious sentiment around abortion. There was another talking point that was supposed to draw in the more "morally minded" irreligious by having this talking point of Abortion being the same as murder, which actually fought against the no vote as people didn't just take it on the chin, they used it as a talking point in which a majority of the discussion came to the conclusion that when the fetus is under 12 weeks, it is not a human and thus doesn't feel anything (or something to the same effect) therefore it's not inhumane to abort it especially if the child was conceived through rape.

This vote on Abortion solidifies one thing: Ireland is catching up in the world of becoming more Socially Open Minded and open to discussion on things from an outside perspective. Especially in a discussion that isn't using Religion as a talking point, this discussion allowed women to talk of their own experiences where they have accidentally conceived a child but aren't ready to have one, yet when they wanted to abort they couldn't because it was illegal, in some cases to put themselves in more danger by having an unregulated not 100% safe illegal abortion through some other means. Catholicism may be the main religion in the Republic of Ireland but it does not control its moral compass quite as much as it used to.