Historic landslide victory as Ireland votes to legalize abortion

RT
Sat, 26 May 2018 17:43 UTC

In a historic landslide victory, Ireland has voted to effectively legalize abortion, removing a clause in the constitution that had been described by the UN as a violation of women's human rights.

The Irish electorate voted 1,429,981 to 723,632 in favor of repealing the Eighth Amendment of the country's constitution.

Saturday's result removes the equal right to life of the unborn and mother from the constitution. The conservative 1983 law had effectively banned all abortions, leading to thousands of Irish women travelling abroad to countries such as the UK to undergo the procedure.

The Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar said the vote is a "culmination of a quiet revolution." Speaking ahead of the official result on Saturday afternoon, Varadkar said the success of the campaign was down to a number of "very brave women and men" who told their stories and their experiences of how this "hard law created so many hard cases."

Friday's vote followed a number of scandals over women's healthcare in Ireland, most notably the death of Savita Halappanavar. The 31-year-old Indian dentist lost her life in 2012 at a Galway hospital due to septic miscarriage. She was 17 weeks pregnant at the time, and had asked medics for a termination when her medical situation became apparent.

The case of Savita revived the pro-choice movement across Ireland, leading to the introduction of legislation providing for medics to act in cases where the life of the mother was at a real and substantial risk.

In one case in 2016, the UN Human Rights Committee said that Ireland's abortion ban had subjected a woman to "suffering and discrimination" after she was forced to choose between continuing a non-viable pregnancy or travelling abroad for an abortion.

As momentum grew, the Irish government was forced to put a vote on legalizing abortion to the people. Saturday's vote inserts a clause into the constitution which now allows legislators to put forward new laws on abortion. These are expected to legalize terminations up to 12 weeks, and later in the pregnancy in cases of rape and fatal fetal abnormalities. This will be debated and decided on in parliament over the coming weeks, with the laws set to be passed before the end of this year.

Health Minister Simon Harris, who campaigned for a Yes vote, said he is humbled and 'proud to be Irish' following the landmark vote. He told RTE Radio 1 that the vote was a great result for the women of Ireland.

"Before, we were telling women to take a plane or a boat, and now we're telling them to take our hand," he said of the emphatic victory.

In the wake of Saturday's result, the parents of Savita Halappanavar asked that the new law be named after their late daughter. In an interview with the Irish Times from their home in Belgaum, Karnataka in southwest India, they said: "We are really, really happy. We have one last request, that the new law, that it is called 'Savita's law.' It should be named for her."

Reader Comments

Anna1 · 2018-05-26T20:25:22Z

There are enough children in the world needing good loving homes. Why introduce children who are pre-disposed to being unwanted, unloved and resented?
A better tomorrow depends on us understanding that young life needs to be supported in a loving home with 'parents' who actually want the social responsibility of being a parent and who have a reasonable possibility of being able to provide for the child as s/he grows up.

Seeker · 2018-05-26T22:40:26Z

So Ireland finally succumbs to the tilde wave of social liberalism that brings with it an equal and opposite tidal wave of negative ramifications; acceptance of rampant sexual promiscuity as the norm, a cultural disdain for the role of secure parenting, a further break down of trust and empathy between the sexes and the constitutional enshrinement that human life can be thrown away in the trash can as it has no inherent value, to name but a few.

This whole referendum has been appallingly, willfully and deliberately mishandled by the state, conflating a decision on extreme cases (where, whether through cases of rape, incest, congenital disease or other tragic circumstance, the mother's physical life or psychological future is clearly an issue of grave concern) with abortion offered freely on demand to everyone and anyone up to 3 months into the term. As a result rights are showered like confetti and responsibilities trampled in the dirt, contemptuously ridiculed as being 'un-modern' and regressive. I know so many people in Ireland who were naturally deeply opposed to the latter option found themselves guilted into voting yes because of the over representative promotion of individual cases of a heart rending and manipulative nature. Add to this an un-opposed, un-nuanced #metoo, post modernist ('smash everything that exists from the patriarchy') feminist driven ('hands of our bodies toxic masculinity'), feeding frenzy, and you had the recipe for disaster Ireland has now agreed to. Sleepwalking with grotesque celebration into the murder of millions of healthy babies in the years ahead. At the same time the globalist Taoiseach (prime minister) has declared Ireland needs 1 million immigrants in the next 5 years.

In recent years I have watched with increasing sadness and despair as modern Ireland has caved in to every single faddish idiom on the block in a desperate attempt to out utopia even the most liberal of Europe's failing states. This has death knell written all over it. Ashamed.