Irish Reject a Move to Allow Abortions : Election: But voters approve measures to permit information and let women go abroad for the procedure. No party gains majority of seats.

LONDON —  Irish voters, by a decisive margin of about 2 to 1, rejected a measure allowing abortion to save the life of a mother, partial results of Wednesday’s election showed Friday.

But two other abortion-related amendments to the constitution passed by similarly lopsided margins: The voters decided to permit circulation of abortion information and to allow Irish women to leave the country for abortions.

“I don’t think the electorate has addressed the fundamental issue,” one commentator said of the results. “This simply means that abortion can be legally exported.”

In the voting for a new 166-member Dail, or Parliament, projections of the slowly counted vote indicated that no party would receive an overall majority, meaning there will be negotiations among the principal parties on a coalition government.

Prime Minister Albert Reynolds’ Fianna Fail party, with a 5% swing against it, was posting its worst electoral result since 1927. Fianna Fail appeared to be losing up to seven of its 77 seats.

Reynolds was blamed for getting into a personal quarrel with Desmond O’Malley, the leader of his coalition partner, the Progressive Democrats. That led to the fall of the government and premature, unwanted elections.

The main opposition party, Fine Gael, suffered even heavier losses because of inroads by the Labor Party, which won at least 30 seats, double its previous strength.

That puts the Labor Party, headed by Dick Spring, in a strong position to determine the makeup of the next government. Labor will probably choose an alliance with either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.

Spring’s price could be several Cabinet seats in the next government, as well as adoption of some Labor policies by the next prime minister. Some political sources speculated that Spring might even be leader of a broad coalition. A new government will not be voted on until Parliament meets Dec. 16.

On the abortion issue, both sides claimed victory.

Dr. Berry Kiely, a leading foe of abortion, said, “I am delighted that the people have shown they don’t want abortion in this country.”

But Maxine Brady, president of the Union of Students in Ireland who helped lead the fight for liberalizing Ireland’s tough constitution barring abortion for any reason, said the “yes” vote on travel and abortion information indicated a “sea change” in Ireland.

She predicted that a new government would eventually be forced to pass legislation allowing women to seek abortions in certain cases--for instance, where the mother’s health is endangered.

About 5,000 Irish women travel to Britain for abortions each year.

Brady blamed the heavy vote against abortion in narrowly restricted circumstances on the referendum’s confusing wording. She also said many abortion rights advocates may have voted against the measure because they believed that it was not liberal enough.

The abortion amendments were proposed after the Supreme Court ruled in February that a 14-year-old girl, pregnant as the result of a rape, could travel abroad to obtain an abortion. Overturning a lower court order that blocked the girl from going to England, the court held that her threats of suicide fell within the constitution’s provision for protecting “the equal right to life of the mother.” But the court did not directly deal with the principle of the ban on travel to obtain an abortion.