Irish voters have voted to overturn the nation’s legal protections for unborn children — setting up government-sponsored legislation to legalize abortions on babies as old as 6 months. For decades, the Eighth Amendment has protected unborn babies and mothers equally in Ireland by recognizing that both are valuable human beings who deserve a right to life. More than 100,000 Irish unborn babies and mothers have been spared from the pain and death of abortion, thanks to the constitutional protection.
Ireland’s eighth amendment recognizes the “right to life of the unborn” with an “equal right to life of the mother.” Without the Eighth Amendment, there is nothing to prevent lawmakers from legalizing abortion for any reason up to birth. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar pushed for legalizing abortion and applauded Irish voters.
Some pro-life advocates are not surprised by the results, especially after Facebook and Google banned advertising on the abortion referendum.
That essentially obliterated the pro-life side’s ability to get out its message, as pro-life groups were preparing to spend heavily on social media ads to rally votes against legalizing abortion. Attention will now turn to the Irish Parliament, which is expected to approve the government’s bill to legalize abortions on babies up to 6 months old for specious “mental health” reasons. The proposal they are pushing already is very extreme. It would legalize abortion for any reason up to 12 weeks of pregnancy and up to six months in a wide range of circumstances. The fear is Ireland’s abortion law will mirror Britain’s, where one in every five pregnancies there ends in abortion each year. In Britain, abortion is permitted until 24 weeks of gestation on five grounds. In 2016, 97% of abortions in England and Wales were performed on ‘mental health’ grounds. Two percent were for abnormalities. Irish doctors were some of the most outspoken advocates against abortion, saying the repeal of the Eighth Amendment would do nothing whatsoever to help Irish women. People with disabilities and their families also expressed fears that legalized abortion could lead to wide-spread, deadly discrimination against unborn babies.
Edited from Life News
Comments