Today is history.
After a four-hour long cabinet meeting, with a break for pizza, Katherine Zappone, Simon Harris and Leo Varadkar walked onto a platform in the Department of the Taoiseach and announced that the Irish government will be holding a referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish constitution by the end of May.
To a room brimming with anticipation and a country watching with incredulity that the day was finally here, the Taoiseach made an emotive speech saying that "we should remember the saddest and loneliest journey is made by Irish women who travel to other countries in their thousands to end their pregnancies. These journeys don’t have to happen".
Varadkar recognised that the time has come for Ireland to stop exporting its problems and importing the solutions. It seems the time is has come for his cabinet to recognise this too as the decision from cabinet to hold the referendum and begin the process of legislating for abortion on request for up to 12 weeks gestation was unanimous.
The Taoiseach was clear - "If the referendum is passed, a doctor-led, safe and legal system for the termination of pregnancy will be introduced."
Abortion will be safe, legal and a decision for women to make with their doctors. The time for women in crisis pregnancy situations being faced with an impossible choice will be over, Varadkar recognised the sordid and dangerous history of the plight of women in Ireland being forced into dangerous situations in an effort to terminate their pregnancies.
Simon Harris, as Minister for Health, is to prepare legislation to enable a GP-led scheme of abortion on request.
It is now four months before the Irish electorate will be asked to vote in a referendum to remove the Eighth amendment to the constitution and liberalise Ireland’s abortion laws.
What comes next is a campaign to establish Ireland as a nation without the ideology of the Catholic Church enshrined in its constitution.
On Monday evening, the Irish government finally and conclusively responded to years of pressure from international human rights agencies, the European Courts and thousands of pro-choice activists, by agreeing to hold a referendum to remove a constitutional ban on abortion in Ireland and to legislate for abortion on request for up to 12 weeks gestation.
The Irish government is traditionally led not by internal ideological aspirations but by external agents of change.
Where once the outstretched arms of Rome gripped Leinster House, now the empowering strength of grassroots pro-choice organisations has visibly spread through Dáil Éireann as one by one TDs declared their public support for a repeal of the Eighth Amendment.
The length of the meeting suggests there was resistance at the end from members of the cabinet.
In the 1980s, the Irish government responded to brute force pressure from Catholic right wing groups to hold a referendum on abortion.
Three weeks before the 1983 abortion referendum passed, Sheila Hodgers died.
A mother of two, Hodgers had become pregnant while receiving treatment for a recurrent cancer.
The hospital refused to treat the cancer as it may have been harmful to the foetus. Any requests from Hodgers or her husband for abortion, early delivery or a Caesarean were refused. Hodgers’ baby, Gemma, died a few hours after she was born. Sheila Hodgers died in agony two days later.
On the 7th of Spetember 1983, the Irish electorate voted to amend the constitution. Passed with a 2:1 majority we voted not to protect mothers like Sheila Hodgers but to ensure decades of confusion over how to give equal rights to the mother and the unborn.
An impossible equality when one lives inside the other, and the other is a woman like Savita, or Sheila who becomes secondary by the honour of Bunreacht na hÉireann.
But today, the voices of those who believe in equality, fairness and choices for women have been keenly felt and heard across Ireland.
What once seemed an impossible oration - that a Fianna Fáil leader would stand up in Dáil Éireann and recant on his life-long pro-life status to say that the Eighth Amendment should be removed because it “has been shown to cause real damage to Irishwomen” - has happened.
What once seemed an improbable occurrence - that a Taoiseach would lead the way to legislating for abortion - has today occurred.
And what is now inevitable, that a referendum on abortion will take place, one that has a reasonable chance of passing, was once just the distant dream of thousands of men and women who have campaigned to protect women in Ireland.
On the streets, in the rain, for years, women have marched and protested and demonstrated against a law which holds their lives in contempt for the duration of their pregnancy.
But it is not alone women have fought for decades. Those who opposed the amendment in 1983 were labelled baby-killers, loose and frivolous women, but with every hurl of abuse or graphic tactic from the pro-life lobby the body of women only grew and grew to include more women, more men, more boys, more fathers.
Now the movement to repeal represents members from every echelon and crevice of society. It is an issue that doesn’t discriminate between social class or standing.
The strength of the Repeal the 8th campaign comes from the people. The Irish government did not move to remove the 8th amendment independently, they waited until hundreds of protestors became thousands. They waited until the voices of repeal were loud enough to blast through the granite walls of Leinster House.
Today is a moment to celebrate, not that people in Ireland will, come May, be able to vote access abortions in their own country, but that come what may, the Repeal movement has brought Ireland out from under the rock of public morality which has weighed it down.
The Eighth Amendment changed the course of thousands of women's and men’s lives. It is impossible to chart the ripple effect of a law that forbids women from accessing a medical procedure in their own country, but as ever it is the most vulnerable members of society that have suffered. Those who are marginalised economically, socially and geographically remain punished by an amendment.
Undoubtedly many more women have remained pregnant than wanted to, the class divide between those who can pay to travel and those who can’t.
As we celebrate a historic day, there is a solemnity that remains in the form of the 12 women Ireland will turn their backs to tomorrow and travel to the UK for a medical procedure still denied to them at home. There is solace however in the knowledge that although our back is still turned, our eyes are turned to the light of the summer and a campaign that paves the way for the lonely journey abroad - the saddest and loneliest journey - to become a safe and supported and legal procedure at home.
