1 - Ireland is a civilised country in all areas except one: our abortion laws. Check out the map here. Ireland’s abortion laws put it in the same category as bastions of human rights like Somalia, Afghanistan, the Congo and Papua New Guinea. Saudi Arabian women have more abortion rights than Irish women. It really is that bad. It is long past time to rectify this wrong and to end our national shame.
2 - The Irish Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is in favour of repealing the 8th Amendment, as is the Irish Midwife’s Association. The professional view these doctors and midwives is that they cannot do their jobs properly thanks to the 8th amendment. They have to deal every day with the terrible consequences of this badly thought out constitutional amendment. Are we really so sure that we know better than they do what is needed? What argument can we make that we know better? Let’s see.
3 - According to the Irish constitution a fully grown woman has an “equal right to life” with an embryo. The text reads: “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 a straightforward obscenity. The right to life of a fully grown woman clearly vastly exceeds that of an embryo and to say otherwise, as the Irish constitution currently does, is outrageous. It is not just an insult to Irish women – as an Irish man I am insulted to have something this stupid in my constitution.
4 - The 8th Amendment is an outright lie. It is easy to see that Irish people do not actually believe that mothers and unborn children have an “equal right to life” – we showed this when voted overwhelmingly to give women the explicit right to travel abroad for pregnancy terminations. We might as well have put in our constitution: “We don’t really mind if you have an abortion as long as you go to England – just don’t do it on holy Irish soil”. The national hypocrisy is stunning. The fact that we enshrine in our constitution the right of women to travel to have abortions demonstrates that we do not actually think that an unborn child has an “equal right to life” as the mother. This is why the 8th Amendment is an outright lie.
5 - If you put lies in your constitution it is not just symbolic. It has bad real-world consequences. In the Y case a pregnant rape victim was denied an abortion in Ireland. She was a foreign national so she could not do what many Irish women do in that situation (i.e. go to England). After the woman went on hunger strike an Irish court ordered her to be force fed. Another proud day for Ireland courtesy of the 8th amendment.
In 2010 an Irish woman was denied an abortion despite being diagnosed with fatal foetal syndrome. The cruelty and inhumanity of this simply beggars belief. Imagine a law that COERCES women with fatal foetal abnormalities to continue pregnancy and undergo child birth against their will? After being abandoned by her own country this woman had to go to England of course. At least she was able to do so.
If Savita Halappanavar had been granted an abortion when she requested it she would be alive now, but due to our abortion laws she was denied it and that is why she is dead now.
If you put dumb shit in your constitution then this is the kind of thing that happens.
The 8th has inflicted unnecessary suffering on countless women in Ireland. It is barbaric. It degrades us as a people. It is a cancer in our constitution and it needs to be removed. By voting to remove the amendment we can in a small way apologise to the women who have suffered and take steps to ensure that appalling events like these do not happen again. One thing is for sure: if we disgrace ourselves and vote No then appalling events like these WILL happen again. Knowing this, how can anyone is good conscience vote No?
6 - Now, it may be that after the X case (Remember that? The attorney general slapped a travel injunction on a pregnant fourteen year old rape victim in regard to travelling to England for an abortion. Another disgrace for our nation thanks to this sham provision in our constitution) a judge eventually interpreted the 8th amendment to in this instance privilege the life of the mother over that of the unborn. But this “interpretation” contradicts the plain meaning of the text, which explicitly says that their right to life is “equal” and therefore that one should not be privileged over the other. There is a good reason why the judge, when dealing with the concrete reality of the X case, had to interpret the text to mean something that it does not say: the text of the 8th amendment is ABSURD – it is so obviously absurd that no reasonable person can take what it actually says seriously, so it therefore needs to be ignored (i.e. “interpreted” to mean something that it does not actually say). Well, are we really going to leave this absurdity in our Constitution? Why not just take the stupid thing out, since its symbolism is grotesque and its real-world consequences even worse?
7- Our favoured means of ignoring the cruelty of the 8th amendment involves hopping on a Ryanair flight to London. Time to end this national farce. How ironic and humiliating that we Irish rely on Britain, our old colonial master, to solve for us the problem that we don’t have the courage and maturity to face for ourselves. Now we have the opportunity to show at least a modicum of courage and maturity and begin dealing with the problem ourselves. I really hope that we don’t make a holy show of ourselves and vote No.
8 - Do the No people ever pause to think how nasty and squalid their campaign has been? Think for a moment what it is like for women who have suffered late term miscarriages being forced to look at those No posters day after day, week after week, month after month. Does this ever cross the minds of the No people? Do they even care? They have lost the argument. They have no argument so their campaign relies almost entirely on what is really a form of emotional bullying.
While we’re at it, many foreigners like to use Ireland as a poster-boy for their social agenda and fund these campaigns – are we not a bit tired of Ireland being used as a pawn in somebody else’s culture war? They don’t have to deal with the consequences. We do.
9 - The decrepit Catholic hierarchy is telling you to vote No. These are the same people who tell you that it’s a mortal sin to wear a condom. We all ignore them about contraception so why should we pay any attention to them about this? After the child abuse scandals what authority do they have to lecture the rest of us about morality? They will never face the problems, heartaches and complexities that other people face in regard to this. They will never have to go through pregnancy and birth. They will never struggle with fertility problems. They will never have a miscarriage. They will never have to be a parent to a child. They will never have to decide whether to have a termination or not. Are these (supposedly) celibate men really the people to be lecturing the rest of us about this? They are entitled to their opinion, of course; and the rest of us are entitled to ignore it.
It’s really very simple: we need to delete this poisonous amendment from our Constitution.
We can do it now.
Or we can wait another few years and do it then.
Do you really want to go through all this again?
We might as well just do it now.
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