Irish voted for gay marriage… legal abortion next?
So where to next for Ireland? The progressive elite already have their next target in sight - the repeal of the eighth amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the right to life of the unborn.
While the effectiveness of this amendment is compromised due to the 1992 Supreme Court decision in the “X case,” it is still the only thing that stands in the way of European-style abortion on demand in Ireland. Groups like the Pro Life Campaign are now preparing for a fresh assault from the pro-abortion movement on the right to life, even within the next 12 months.
Irish Catholics stood alone to fight against homosexual “marriage” in the face of overwhelming U.S. funding for their opposition. Will the same happen when the next abortion referendum comes around?
Elizabeth Adams, National Catholic Register, May 26
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Laws won’t hold back the Culture of Death. There is an oppressively evangelistic zeitgeist which is constantly saying that killing is suitable solution to all sorts of problems, and that new life must be avoided as much as possible.
We have to keep spreading the good news of Life. Life is good!
We need to remind people everywhere that there are better options than this modern lemming-rush towards a cliff.
MAN UP IRISH PROTESTANTS AND EVANGELICALS!
Bend your knees to the God of all creation, Who has created each life in the womb and has a calling, purpose and destiny for each precious child. Humbly ask forgiveness for your sins and the sins of your nation; for turning away from the God Who loves you and died for you to redeem you from every lawless deed.
Then stand shoulder to shoulder with your Catholic brothers and sisters and tell the devil he can take his spirits of murder, violence and death back to hell where they belong.
Del: There is an oppressively evangelistic zeitgeist which is constantly saying that killing is suitable solution to all sorts of problems, and that new life must be avoided as much as possible.
Well, Del, that really ain’t the case in Ireland. The 1861 Offences Against the Person Act made abortion in all circumstances.
However, in practice abortions were sometimes tolerated, which led the more hardcore anti-abortion forces to push for further legislation. In 1983 there was a referendum on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution – which was passed into law, and which states:
“The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”
I think Ireland is a special case, here, due to its proximity to places where abortion is legal.
In that same year of 1983, “Sheila Hodgers, who was pregnant and suffering from breast cancer, dies in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda two days after delivering her pregnancy two months premature. Her baby dies almost immediately after birth. Sheila Hodgers’ cancer treatment had been stopped by the hospital, which claimed it would harm the pregnancy. She had also been denied an x-ray and pain relief.
People were understandably up in arms about this.
Later, there was the case of Savita Halappanavar. She died in Galway University Hospital in circumstances where she was refused a termination during inevitable miscarriage because a fetal heartbeat was detectable. The report into her death found over-emphasis on the need not to intervene until the fetal heart stopped, together with under-emphasis on managing the risk of infection and sepsis.
Cases like this have had many people questioning the Irish laws. It usually does not come up, as Ireland has confirmed while women have the right to travel abroad for abortions, that only those women and girls with resources can exercise their right to travel to another country for an abortion. The State also admitted that the public has never been given the opportunity to vote for less restrictive laws on abortion.
Britain, at its closest point, is only 13 miles from Ireland, so the requirements to travel between the two countries are not extreme, i.e. in most cases a woman wanting an abortion just leaves Ireland and later returns; thus the Irish can have the law on the books while still allowing women needing abortions to have them.
Laws won’t hold back the Culture of Death. – yeah I know, just look at that republican line-up!
There is an oppressively evangelistic zeitgeist which is constantly saying that killing is suitable solution to all sorts of problems, – well no, there isn’t.
and that new life must be avoided as much as possible. – that simply isn’t true.
We have to keep spreading the good news of Life. Life is good! – agreed. So why do you keep trying to spoil it for so many people?
We need to remind people everywhere that there are better options than this modern lemming-rush towards a cliff. – ‘options’? As in ‘choice’?
Being against gay marriage and being against killing the unborn are related in that they both go against God’s plan for humanity.
If I pretend for a moment that there is a god truthseeker, then yes, being against those things is against god’s plan.
“Being against killing the unborn….” Haven’t we seen people claiming that God “holds the unborn in his hands,” etc? A high majority of the unborn die in the first few weeks, from various causes, and certainly due to nothing else except the supposed God, eh?
Irish voted for gay marriage…legal abortion next?
No, I would say not. I certainly would say, “not necessarily, no.”
Abortion is de facto legal – women just go to England or Scotland or other places when they need to have abortions. In most cases, the Irish gov’t can maintain its stance without severely impacting women with unwanted pregnancies, vastly diminishing the push for legal abortion within Ireland itself.
As for gay marriage being legal – this is the unwinding of the prejudices of a relatively few people, going back thousands of years; high time, I would say.
John L.: “Being against killing the unborn….” Haven’t we seen people claiming that God “holds the unborn in his hands,” etc? A high majority of the unborn die in the first few weeks, from various causes, and certainly due to nothing else except the supposed God, eh?
On the “The future of artificial wombs” thread – there, one poster had God handling “the baby personally while in-utero.”
Didn’t the Irish legislature vote against an 8th Amendment referendum like a week ago?
You’d think that if these anti-abortion laws were so dangerous for women, they would be able to come up with more than two deaths (both attributable to medical neglect, which unfortunately happens in all countries whether or not abortion is legal) over a period of 30+ years. The goalpost shift is also interesting. The original narrative (women dying horrible deaths from self-induced coathanger abortions) clearly didn’t pan out, so we’re now supposed to be outraged that (a small, steadily declining number of) women have to miss a day of work to fly to Great Britain for an abortion.
Also, notice the incrementalism in play here. The day after the legislature voted to allow a woman to have an abortion if she threatens to kill herself and gets two psychiatrists to sign a form, abortion proponents began pushing for “termination for medical reasons” (their new euphemism for aborting babies with lethal birth defects) and repealing the 8th Amendment (which would not automatically give women the right to abortion on demand, but would open the door for a court challenge or future pro-abortion legislation).
Navi: Didn’t the Irish legislature vote against an 8th Amendment referendum like a week ago?
I guess so, Navi, although googling it didn’t turn up a specific yes or no answer there. However, the current gov’t has indeed said that it has decided not to hold any further referendums during its term of office, so I guess the result is the same.
I mentioned two women who died, but in no way am I saying that they were the only ones. It’s also not just the raw “danger” to women that people are taking into account, there – rape and incest are other factors that at least one political party says it will bring up for discussion when a new gov’t is in place, or perhaps pursuant to forming a new gov’t.
so we’re now supposed to be outraged that (a small, steadily declining number of) women have to miss a day of work to fly to Great Britain for an abortion.
No, I really don’t think so. I see the discussion in Ireland as a good deal different than in the U.S., although let us say that the Roe decision was overturned – that would bring us a mix of state laws, which to some extent would mirror the situation in Ireland and countries close to it.
Yes, there is debate within Ireland about some things, but whether or not Irish abortion laws are meaningfully changed, Irish women are guaranteed the right to make the easy trip to have an abortion – this is right in the Constitution, the 13th and 14th Amendments, which specifically modify the 8th Amendment, by saying, “This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state,” and “This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available, in the State, subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law, information relating to services lawfully available in another state.”
So, rather both a freedom to travel and freedom of information, there.
I just reread my post and it is not clear. What I meant to say is that both homosexual marriage and killing unborn children go against God’s plan for humanity.
truthseeker says:
I just reread my post and it is not clear. What I meant to say is that both homosexual marriage and killing unborn children go against God’s plan for humanity.
Whether we call it “God’s Plan” or “human nature” or “natural selection”…. these things are not healthy for the thriving of human society.
We may create a false prosperity for a while, if we believe hard enough in killing children and intentionally infertile sexual relationship…. just as the Aztecs built a great empire based on perpetual war and numerous human sacrifices. That lasted about 150 years.
We may look rich by consuming our future and indulging ourselves, but we will not last long.
Yes–God does hold the unborn in His hands. That some people have 30 days on this earth, some have 30 years and some have 100 years doesn’t mean God doesn’t hold the unborn in His hands. He is the Creator–not you, not me and so He gets to decide how many days will be written in the book for each life.
That some babies die at birth doesn’t mean that newborns aren’t precious lives. So why do pro-aborts act like life in the womb must not be worth much if some babies die in the womb? All old people eventually die so are old people throw away as well? A lot of younger folks die too..in fact it is funny that mortality seems to be a trait within the human race. Does that make my life less precious? Or your life?
We may look rich by consuming our future and indulging ourselves, but we will not last long.
Del, we’ve already done pretty well, really, when you look at how log things last, in general. You get over 200 years and pretty soon, the hegemony is in decline.
Sydney: That some babies die at birth doesn’t mean that newborns aren’t precious lives. So why do pro-aborts act like life in the womb must not be worth much if some babies die in the womb?
You’re mischaracterizing things, Sydney. Being pro-choice is hardly being pro-abortion, per se. And it is also not to say that “life in the womb must not be worth much.” Some people, obviously, want to have kids very much. There is no question that a miscarriage can be an enormously sad thing.
Yet it’s not always. The vast majority of zygotes and embryos die, without notice and without sadness on the part of the woman, the woman and man, or all of us included. Do you see people all up in arms and rioting in the streets because of failure to implant and/or genetic problems that mean the death, there? It really is a different thing, and to generalize – we don’t think about it or care about it on a daily basis.
Hi Doug–I was responding to John L and his absurd notion that unborn life must not be worth anything since many babies die in the womb of natural causes. We all die…eventually. I don’t think that means human life isn’t precious.
I use the term “pro-abortion” because that is the choice we are discussing. I am pro-choice about a lot of things. School choice, vaccine choice etc… I’m a libertarian so I believe people should be able to make choices–even choices I don’t necessarily agree with.
Deliberately ending another person’s life is not a choice I support. So I can’t really use the term “pro-choice” when NO ONE is pro-ALL choices. And as I said, I myself am pro-MANY choices. No, what we’re talking about here is abortion. That’s the issue. So you can call me anti-abortion. And I will call anyone defending it pro-abortion. No more smoke and mirrors concerning the topic. I think its best to be straight forward.
Sydney, I don’t see that John L. pronounced on the value of the unborn.
It’s truly not a big deal, the “pro-choice” thing, but once in a while I do bother to correct people. It’s a given, after all, that here we are talking about the choice of abortion and whether or not it should be legal.
If somebody is truly “pro-abortion,” then that would be not taking the will of the pregnant woman or girl into account, quite a different thing.
I guess so, Navi, although googling it didn’t turn up a specific yes or no answer there.
There was a vote in May, and is was soundly rejected:
http://www.thejournal.ie/dail-vote-abortion-2098932-May2015/
I mentioned two women who died, but in no way am I saying that they were the only ones.
Maybe not, but critics of Ireland’s abortion laws have had over 30 years to come up with their big list of dead women. If I tried to argue that legal abortion is dangerous for women and cited two women who died from it in the last 30 years (one of them at Gosnell’s clinic), you would probably ask for more evidence before you’d be convinced.
It’s also not just the raw “danger” to women that people are taking into account, there – rape and incest are other factors that at least one political party says it will bring up for discussion when a new gov’t is in place, or perhaps pursuant to forming a new gov’t.
That’s not a fault with the law though. It’s designed to protect the right to life, including both the pregnant woman’s and the unborn child’s, not to facilitate abortion if the mother was raped. Whether you have a right to life at all, or how much of it you have, shouldn’t turn on the question of whether or not you are a product of rape.
No, I really don’t think so. I see the discussion in Ireland as a good deal different than in the U.S., although let us say that the Roe decision was overturned – that would bring us a mix of state laws, which to some extent would mirror the situation in Ireland and countries close to it.
How is the U.S. situation any different from Ireland’s? Before Roe, women travelled to states with more permissive laws (or to Europe) in order to have abortions. They do the same today in states that have closed many of their abortion clinics.
Yes, there is debate within Ireland about some things, but whether or not Irish abortion laws are meaningfully changed, Irish women are guaranteed the right to make the easy trip to have an abortion – this is right in the Constitution, the 13th and 14th Amendments, which specifically modify the 8th Amendment, by saying, “This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state,” and “This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available, in the State, subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law, information relating to services lawfully available in another state.”
So, rather both a freedom to travel and freedom of information, there.
If it’s such an easy trip and Irish women have access to abortion on demand, what’s the point of dramatic propaganda campaigns and social media memes? Wouldn’t these efforts be better spent on areas where it’s much more difficult to obtain an abortion?
The 13th and 14th Amendments only specify the extent to which the government has to enforce the law. No law enforcement (short of mass surveillance, which even Communist Romania couldn’t successfully implement) could possibly stop everyone from breaking the law or getting around it. One could easily argue that not stopping women at the border is too lenient and not the most effective policy, but that’s quite a bit different from saying that women have access to abortion on demand. As it is now, the number of women travelling for abortion is small (and steadily declining) and there is no evidence that Ireland’s law is dangerous for women.