Irish Archbishop Eamon Martin praised his nation for providing tender, loving protections to mothers and unborn babies on Oct. 1 in a passionate speech against abortion.
Ireland is a battleground nation for abortion activists, backed by some of the world’s richest men. The pro-life country’s Eighth Amendment protects the right to life of unborn babies and bans abortions except when the mother’s life is in jeopardy; but abortion activists are working hard to repeal it.
On Saturday, the Catholic archbishop urged Irish people to counter the pro-abortion efforts with a “revolution of tenderness,” according to the Catholic News Agency. Saturday was the Day of Life, a date the Catholic Church in Ireland sets aside to celebrate the sanctity of life.
“This amendment is precious and wonderful – it places as the very foundations and substructure of our laws a clear conviction that all human life is worth cherishing,” Martin said.
“Demands to quash and abolish this amendment go against the Good News that the life of every person is sacred and inviolable, irrespective of the stage or state of that life – from the first moment of conception until the moment of natural death,” he added.
Ireland is one of the few countries left in Europe that protects unborn babies’ right to life. Pro-lifers estimate that the Eighth Amendment, which passed in a national referendum in 1983, has saved approximately 100,000 unborn babies’ lives from abortion in Ireland.
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However, the nation is facing global pressure from the United Nations and pro-abortion groups, backed by some of the world’s richest men, to legalize abortion on demand by repealing the Eighth Amendment. Claiming that abortion is a “human right” for women, abortion activists at the UN pressured Ireland in May to legalize the killing of unborn babies in cases of rape, incest, serious risk to the mother’s health and fatal fetal abnormalities.
Archbishop Martin responded to these claims on Saturday, describing the Eighth Amendment as a compassionate measure that extends love and protections to both women and children.
“It is therefore fundamentally a declaration of tenderness and love for the equal right to life of both a mother and her unborn child. It is an undertaking to respect, defend and vindicate that right here in Ireland,” he said.
“Nowadays the way of tenderness is indeed counter-cultural and revolutionary,” he continued. “It is perhaps the only way to confront inhumanity and cruelty, to bridge the great divide which greed has created between the rich and the poor, and to expose the pervasive ‘throwaway culture’ which surrounds us.”
In August, Ireland’s High Court agreed. A High Court judge ruled that the word “unborn” in the Irish Constitution means an “unborn child” who has the same rights as other human beings that “must be taken seriously.”
