Ailbhe SmythConscience, Catholics for Choice, 25 April 2016“The Irish Church’s failures have caused its people to choose secularism over faith.” This was the dramatic headline on the May 25, 2015 edition of the Catholic Herald (UK) after the same-sex marriage referendum victory.Although the large majority of people in Ireland continue to define themselves as Catholic, it is a very different kind of Catholicism from the traditional form that held us enslaved for so long. It is more individualistic, more independent, more rational… Irish people are no longer prepared to follow the diktat of the church in socio-sexual matters. While Ireland may in some respects still be “culturally Catholic,” that culture is increasingly and manifestly tempered by a sophisticated and cosmopolitan perspective…Nonetheless, we still have a major struggle in front of us: to obtain the right to safe, legal and, ideally, free abortion in Ireland. Wresting women’s freedom, autonomy and bodily integrity from the hands of patriarchal power ̶ and none more patriarchal than the Catholic hierarchy ̶ is an urgent and still daunting task. Abortion has always been the most difficult issue: It is the unmentionable, the most stigmatized, the most profoundly silenced. Political leadership is still very weak and inconsistent on women’s issues, and the large majority of politicians haven’t the courage to tackle the issue of abortion…