Language set for referendum to excise protective 8th Amendment to the Constitution
By Dave Andrusko
Every cliché, every slur against pro-lifers, every pretense at moderation was on display in the Irish Parliament as language was adopted for an early summer referendum on abortion.
The proposed language would strike the 8th Amendment to the Constitution, which recognizes the equal rights of mothers and unborn babies, and would authorize the Parliament [the Oireachtas] to legislate on abortion.
Abortion would be legal for any reason throughout the first 12 weeks. However what the Irish government calls an “enabling provision” – that is, that “Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancies”—is uncharted territory.
Pat Leahy of the pro-abortion Irish Times describes it as allowing abortion for “specific circumstances such as where there is a threat to the mental or physical health of the woman, and in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities.” Essentially a blank check.
Irish Health Minister Simon Harris said a “’cold, uncaring, neglectful Ireland’ must change and reform abortion laws,” the Irish Mirror reported.
Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of the Sinn Féin political party, bashed critics as “scaremongers, shame on you.” It went downhill from there. Here just some examples.
Harris said, “We stand here knowing the tragedy which befell Savita Halappanavar and her family,” the Irish Times reported. ” However she died in 2012, not because of the 8th Amendment, as has been stated as fact, but because of the hospital’s sheer incompetence, according to a 2014 report from Ireland’s Health Information and Quality Authority.
He also recycled the totally dishonest formulation first uttered by pro-abortion president Bill Clinton that “our underlying principle” ought to be “that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.”
Billy Kelleher, the Health spokesman for another political party (the Fianna Fáil) said that critics of the proposed changes are “basically saying we can’t trust women.”
He also talked about rape and incest, as if there were a massive number of pregnancies resulting from them.
Needless to say, neither story carried a single comment in favor of the 8th Amendment.
All this comes two days after the Irish Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision, concluding the unborn child has no constitutional rights beyond the Eighth Amendment.
As a result, as the Irish Pro-Life organization, Family & Life quite accurately put it, “The vote in May will be an all or nothing one for the unborn. The stakes are now even higher.”