The Pro Life Campaign in Dublin, Ireland has said that any suggestion that negotiations for a new government would be held up or influenced by discussions on abortion is astonishing given the lack of support for a referendum in the recent election results.
The comments came as the country’s political parties enter another week of talks after a particularly incomplete and fractured election result that left no clear winner. As a result, the acting Prime Minister has been forced to enter into talks with other politicians in an attempt to form a government. Several politicians are strongly opposed to any suggestion of holding a referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment, which guarantees the equal right to life of women and unborn babies, and pro-choice groups like Amnesty Ireland are trying to put pressure on politicians.
Speaking earlier, a Pro Life Campaign spokesperson, Sinead Slattery said:
“The feedback from the recent election was that the abortion issue was being raised on the doorsteps by pro-life supporters, not by those seeking the dismantling of the Eighth Amendment. And yet we still see campaigners and groups like Amnesty who have spent the last few weeks trying to re-write history and insist that there is grassroots support for a referendum even though this is clearly not the case.
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She also pointed out that the current suggestion that a “citizens’ convention” should be held to look into the issue in Ireland would not be popular among pro-life supporters as it would remind them too much of the situation in 2013, where the Irish Government held two sets of Hearings where a number of experts gave their opinion on the question of abortion as a treatment for suicide. Even after acknowledging that there is no evidence anywhere in the world to support abortion as a treatment for women experiencing suicidal tendencies during pregnancy, the Government went ahead and introduced abortion for the full 9 months of pregnancy where there is a risk of suicide.
With such a history, it is no wonder that pro-life supporters are wary of any suggestion of another convention or discussion forum that would most likely have a pre-arranged outcome – a referendum to remove the basic human right from the Irish Constitution.
