[National Review] There are many things to admire in Ireland’s written constitution. Most especially, the text includes, since a popular referendum in 1983, the Eighth Amendment: "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." This is the most advanced law protecting the life of unborn children in the Western world. It is also, in its way, beautiful. In the controlling Irish language, it protects "na mbeo gan breith," or "the living without birth." We urge the Irish people to retain it when a referendum aimed at its repeal is presented to them this May.
Ireland’s government, most of its media class, and a number of NGOs are campaigning to erase the Eighth and allow the Dail to legislate to make abortion available. The law they are proposing to enact afterward is modeled on legislation found in the United Kingdom. It includes an unlimited right to terminate a pregnancy in the first twelve weeks of gestation, and then an expansive health exception that would effectively allow the termination of any pregnancy at any time. The choice before the Irish people is not just to make abortion legal in Ireland, but to make it common there. |