The Fifteenth Amendment of the Irish Constitution Act 1995

The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution Act 1995 removed the ban on divorce from the Irish Constitution. It was the second attempt at removing the ban; the first in 1986, ended with a substantial victory for the no-divorce campaigners. This was perhaps surprising: by the 1980s, Ireland stood apart; most other Western countries had long since introduced divorce laws. When the referendum came, one would have assumed that there would be a strong vote for divorce in Ireland. In fact, the proposal was easily defeated and the majority (including the majority of women) voted against removing the ban in 1986. By the time of the second referendum in 1995, a number of changes had taken place which had liberalised laws and altered attitudes to women. For example, women had won the right to sit on juries, and to use contraception, marital rape had been criminalised, gender discrimination had been legislated for, Mary Robinson had been elected as President of Ireland, and the Irish Supreme Court had allowed a 14-year-old rape victim to travel abroad for an abortion. 1 The 1995 campaign was presented as a women’s rights issue and a continuation of the fight for freedom of choice for women and while the proposal passed with only the narrowest of margins, the victory demonstrates, in a microcosmic sense, that the position and status of women in modern Ireland had changed forever.