On May 25 we will be asked to remove unborn children’s right to life of from the Constitution. Why? To make abortion widely available up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, and even to make abortion legal up to birth in certain cases.
Senior politicians are claiming that this referendum is only about the hard cases. This is completely untrue. If it was a referendum about the hard cases we would be dealing with a situation where 50 or 80 abortions per year will take place in Irish clinics.
But we are not. If this referendum passes, at least 5,000 abortions per year will take place in Irish clinics. The real figure will be a lot closer to 14,000 per year if our abortion rate matches that of Britain, which has basically the same abortion laws that our Government is proposing.
In England currently one baby is aborted for every four that are born. That amounts to almost roughly 185,000 abortions per year. 90 per cent of children diagnosed with Down Syndrome in the womb are aborted there. Our Government’s planned abortion law is very similar to the current law in England. This is not about restricted abortion in hard cases. This is about abortion on demand.
Extreme proposals
The Government’s proposals are extreme. Government politicians and abortion campaigners might say otherwise but the planned law is available for the public to see. Many of the country’s leading lawyers, including former judges and constitutional experts, have confirmed that it will lead to almost totally unrestricted abortion.
When we vote in the referendum we will make a life and death choice. If we vote “no” we will keep abortion out of Ireland. We will keep Ireland with easily the lowest abortion rate in the E.U. We will keep Ireland as statistically one of the world’s safest countries for women to give birth in. We will keep Ireland as a country that respects life.
If we vote “yes” we will introduce the killing of unborn babies into our health service. We will introduce unrestricted abortion into our society. We will support the abortion of disabled children. We will repeal thousands of innocent lives each year.
We are what we vote for
We are what we vote for. We are either for or against life. This is not a middle ground debate. This is not about hard cases. If the Government wanted a restricted referendum on the hard cases it could have chosen that. But this referendum goes far, far, beyond that. It’s about whether we are for or against abortion on demand. Our tick on the voting card will help to either save lives or take lives.
Consider what happens when a society goes down the path of abortion on demand. Abortion becomes the norm. No one opposes it. No one speaks against it. For women in a crisis pregnancy it becomes expected of them, especially if the baby has a disability. The psychological harm abortion causes women gets swept under the carpet. Doctors who refuse to co-operate with abortions are pushed out of the medical profession. Pressure is put on schools to present abortion as a right and as something positive. Those who oppose abortion are forced out of politics.
Abortion on demand produces a contradiction. In one hospital ward doctors will try to save a baby’s life. Just down the hall in the abortion clinic doctors are trying to kill a baby of the same age. This is the reality in so many places across the world, in places like England, China, North Korea, and Canada.
In Ireland we can do better. We can continue to be a beacon of hope to all those around the world who have been hurt by abortion and who have lost because of abortion.
Sometimes the most positive thing we can say is No
A No vote on May 25tis positive for babies, for women, and for our next generation.
Mairéad Fallon is a student and lives in Barna.
