Annotated List of Other Resources
Wednesday, 2 May, 2018
The most important, but also the longest, resource about the Referendum is the Citizen's Assembly report which began the process of which the referendum is the culmination.
The Citizen's Assembly on the Eighth Amendment is the most comprehensive public engagement with the issue of the termination of pregnancy in Ireland. The Citizen's Assembly consists of 99 Irish citizens who were randomly selected to serve as a representative sample of Irish society, in order to debate issues of great public importance. Their first task was to discuss whether the law should allow for the termination of pregnancy. Their extensive report was the first step on the path to the current referendum. In addition to the report itself, some of the appendices are worth pointing out. Appendix B contains a list of the statements of members of the Assembly in their own words about how they want this report to be understood. The most important part of the report is Appendix E, which contains all of the expert advice and all of the testimony, as well as a sample of the submissions received by the Assembly. It is lengthy enough (almost 1000 pages) to be made available seperately from the rest of the report. The drafters of the report decided not to summarise the materials that the Assembly considered, and encourages Irish citizens to read the material in full themselves.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment accepted the recommendations of the Citizen's Assembly, with what it took to be the necessary modifications to better fit with Ireland's parliamentary and legislative framework. This report is what has lead to the current referendum.
Other resources, which are shorter but may still be of interest:
The Referendum Commission has a very short guide restricted purely to legal issues regarding the referendum, as well as some resources about the practicalities of voting.
An accessible compilation of some of the pertinent facts about the current status of termination of pregnancy in Ireland and the effect of the Eighth Amendment and its possible repeal.
A pair of legal experts on the Eighth Amendment gives an extensive overview of the legal ramifications of the Eighth Amendment as well as its possible removal. The authors disclose that they also campaign for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, but this website keeps itself to being a comprehensive statement of legal fact, and they answer questions from the general public without prejudice.
The BBC has put together an extensive guide to issues around the ethics and politics of abortion. While it is designed for the British context, most of the material carries over for the Irish context as well. The 'Philosophical and Ethical Issues’ section covers much of the same kind of material as the CEPL hub does.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a resource which summarises in some detail the existing state of play on some philosophical issue. The article on abortion is the most detailed description of the current debate on the ethics of abortion which is freely available online. It is difficult material, but still accessible for the general public.