As the pressures to legalize abortion increase in Ireland, one man launched a hunger strike Monday to stand up for unborn babies’ right to life.
Ireland Breaking News reports Tim Jackson, of Donegal, Ireland, stood outside the Dáil (lower house of the Irish Parliament) with a white flag and a sign with an image of an unborn baby that read “Stop the killing.”
Jackson said he wants lawmakers to watch a video showing how an unborn baby is aborted before they consider changing Ireland’s laws. He said he will drink only water and will continue the strike “as long as necessary.”
The Eighth Amendment in Ireland gives unborn babies a right to life. The country also has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates and best health care for women in the world. However, abortion activists and some of the world’s richest men have been pushing the pro-life country to repeal the Eighth Amendment and legalize abortion on demand.
A special government committee was established this year to consider if abortion should be legal in certain or any circumstances. However, over the summer, Irish health minister Simon Harris started drafting legislation to legalize abortion before the committee even issued its report.
Then, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced a referendum on the Eighth Amendment on his first day in office, SPUC reports. The vote will be held in the summer of 2018.
Jackson said he decided to begin the hunger strike “to demand Leo Varadkar and his Abortion Committee watch a video of how a child is killed in an abortion before discussing a referendum on who can live and die.”
“For this hunger strike, it won’t be until the point of death. I’ll only be taking water and I’ll do it for as long as necessary,” he said in a Facebook video.
Jackson said he wants lawmakers to see how an abortion brutally kills an unborn baby before they make any recommendations.
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“I’ve got my white flag which is really a message to the politicians that they have to end this killing of the unborn, not going any further with it, stop the war on the unborn,” Jackson continued.
Jackson said he wrote a letter to the committee urging them to watch a video describing how an unborn baby is aborted, but he never received an answer.
“It’s a very simple demand that I’m making, that the politicians face the very ugly truth of what will happen to these children in an abortion,” he said. “Too many lives are on the line.”
He said one in 20 Irish babies are aborted outside the country’s borders every year.
“If this referendum passes, it’s going to be a lot more than that,” Jackson said. “In Britain, it’s one in five babies that are aborted. … This is a war on unborn children.”
Grassroots pro-life advocates are working hard to keep the country’s protections for the unborn. Niamh Ui Bhriain of the Life Institute in Ireland said they have thousands of volunteers who are going door to door to talk to people about abortion.
“There are 1.1 million homes in Ireland,” Ui Bhriain told Breitbart earlier this year. “We’ve reached almost 200,000 with the canvass so far, and expect to reach a total of 800,000 before polling day.”
SPUC, Youth Defense and other pro-life organizations in Ireland also have been fighting hard for unborn babies’ rights.
But abortion activists have a well-funded campaign to overturn the amendment, backed by some of the richest men in America. George Soros, Chuck Feeney, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation all have given money to pro-abortion groups who are pushing Ireland to stop giving unborn babies a right to life.
