The 1983 constitutional ban was passed with the active support of the Roman Catholic Church, then a dominant force in Irish religious, social and political life. Initially, the prohibition was zealously enforced although it was widely believed that some doctors would quietly perform emergency terminations in cases of dire medical need.

In recent years, growing opposition to the ban was fueled by a number of legal and medical controversies. Among those was the “X Case” of 1993, in which the attorney general at the time obtained a court order preventing a 13-year-old rape victim from traveling to England to seek an abortion.

This ruling was later reversed on the grounds that the girl might have committed suicide if she had been forced to carry the fetus against her will. In a sign that attitudes were already changing, the Irish electorate subsequently voted against a new referendum, supported by the Catholic Church and anti-abortion organizations, that would have specifically banned suicidal symptoms or expressions as grounds for allowing an abortion.

In October 2012, Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist, died after miscarrying in a Galway hospital. Ms Halappanavar, who was already gravely ill, had asked for an abortion to save her life but was reportedly told that her nonviable fetus could not be removed while it still had a heart beat.

An official inquiry later concluded that confusion over the law had contributed to delays and failures in treatment that were among the causes of her death. The Irish government then passed a law further eroding the blanket ban by specifically allowing terminations in such emergency circumstances.

In the years since 1983, the influence of the Catholic Church has greatly declined in Ireland, partly because of a series of scandals over child sexual abuse and the treatment of “fallen” women and “unwanted” children confined to church-run homes and laundries.

Also, attitudes toward a variety of social issues have generally liberalized. A major bellwether of the changing social views came in 2015, when the Republic of Ireland became the first country in the world to approve gay marriage by a popular vote, 62 to 38 percent.