Irish split up over divorce law

Press, 8 July 1983, Page 13

Irish split up over divorce law

From

COLIN McINTYRE,

Reuters, in Dublin

Jennifer is a cheerful, intelligent, 24-year-old woman, totally normal except for one thing — if she falls in love with a man again she can never legally marry him in her own country. Jennifer’s handicap, one she shares with 35,000 other Irish women, is that she is already married and although that marriage has been dead for years, she cannot obtain a divorce.

Ireland is the only country in Europe, apart from Malta, where it is virtually impossible to get a divorce. There it is not just against the law; it is banned under the constitution.

The bleak choice facing Jennifer and thousands like her is either a life spent alone or an illicit liaison with illegitimate children and all the social and legal complications which that brings in this

overwhelmingly Catholic country. As she told a Dublin paper that carried a profile of her, she finds it hard to accept having to pay the rest of her life for one wrong decision made when she was 17.

A growing number of people in Ireland appear to agree with her and calls for a change in the law have grown to a chorus. A recent opinion poll showed that 56 per cent of the Irish favour legalising of divorce under certain circumstances, while 37 per cent believe divorce should never be permitted. A similar poll 10 years ago showed 48 per cent in favour, 47 against. It is not just the divorce law that is coming under attack but a whole body of legislation on moral questions enacted at a time when the Catholic Church held an officially privileged position in Ireland.

The Church lost its special constitutional position as a result of a national referendum in 1973 but it is still a power in the land. Last month, a doctor told a court he had sold 10 contraceptives to a patient, breaking the law that they can be bought only at a chemist’s shop with a doctor’s prescription. When he received the maximum fine of $llBO, he said he would rather go to jail than pay it. He called the law unworkable and contemptible, and claimed that 250 other doctors were prepared to break the law in the same way. Earlier this year a Gay Rights activist went to the Supreme Court in a bid to overturn a nineteenth

century law banning homosexual acts between consenting adults, which are legal in most European countries.

Although the 38-year-old English lecturer, David Norris, lost his case, two of the five judges ruled in his favour and he predicted a change in the law in the near future.

Even on abortion, which is also banned by law in Ireland, attitudes appear to be changing gradually. An opinion poll taken in May showed that 53 per cent of the population were opposed to the holding of a referendum on putting the existing legal ban on abortion into the constitution, where it

would be out of reach of court rulings.

This was a dramatic change from last November, when a similar poll showed 54 per cent in favour of the referendum and 35 per cent against. Even so, it is the divorce ban that is attracting most attention, partly, critics say, because it is so out of step with the rest of Europe. A Church annulment can be granted if it is proved that at the time of a marriage one or other partner was emotionally incapable of understanding what marriage was about.

Only about 60 such annulments are granted each year but even if a couple win an annulment, in many cases the Church prohibits one or other party from a second Church marriage. This ban can, however, be lifted by a bishop.