October 2018 Debate on the Northern Ireland Bill. Why Northern Ireland Should Not be Forced to Accept British laws – with one abortion taking place every three minutes of every day. The BBC tell a moving story about a baby rescued from the clinical waste. Why Both lives matter.8,894,355 reasons why over one third of Ireland’s voters were right to vote No

May 25, 2018 | News

December 2018: How places of prayer became places of carnage: charnel houses for the child in the womb:

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/uk-abortions-hit-record-high

 

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My Lords, in March 1979, four days after Airey Neave was brutally murdered in the precincts of Parliament, I made my maiden speech in the House of Commons.

 

 I reflected on the need to find political solutions to the endless cycle of violence in Northern Ireland. During the years that followed, I served as a spokesman on Irish affairs. In 1985 I was appointed by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, to be a member of the commission that served under the chairmanship of the late Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, which produced the report What Future for Northern Ireland? 

 

Our commission concluded that progress could be made if, instead of encamped and embedded hostility to the other community, the respectful place of both traditions in a devolved power-sharing institution could be recognised. 

 

While endless legislation was rushed through as emergency legislation, none of it addressed the fundamental issue.

 

Eight years later, on 20 March 1993, the shocking waste of innocent life was underlined when a bomb was left in litter bin in a shopping area of Warrington. 

 

Two children, three year-old Johnathan Ball and 12 year-old Tim Parry, were murdered. As I stood with John Major at their funeral, it was clear that the finest memorial to those boys would be renewed efforts to end a conflict which, over 30 years, claimed 3,600 lives, injured and maimed thousands more, and left countless lives scarred and disfigured in the way that my noble and right reverend friend Lord Eames described earlier.

 

The Downing Street declaration of December 1993 paved the way for the Good Friday agreement, signed on 10 April 1998. 

 

The painstaking and patient work of a succession of Secretaries of State, some of whom have been in your Lordships’ Chamber this afternoon, the statesmanship of men like John Hume and the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, and ultimately the willingness of the Reverend Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to make devolution work, set aside the forced choice between British and Irish identities, with two tribes looking out at one another in enmity and hate—all gains alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, in his moving speech.

 

I hold both an Irish and a British passport, as do my children. In two world wars, my grandfather and father fought in the British Army, and an uncle died in the Royal Air Force. 

 

My mother was a native Irish speaker. Her family suffered extreme poverty in an area where Irish nationalism and republicanism had been nurtured by famine in one century and brutality in the next. 

 

So, more than most, I have always had to hold in tension a love of both traditions. From both sides of my family I was taught to abjure violence and to uphold the sanctity of every human life.

 

 I am troubled to see the gains of those years now at risk. Here we are again, rushing legislation through this House in 24 hours flat, with the House of Commons having done the same.

 

I was struck—it has not been referred to yet—by the report of the Select Committee on the Constitution of your Lordships’ House, published only yesterday. It stated:

 

“We question whether the speed at which the Government wishes to pass this Bill is necessary … more time (even with a fast-track timetable) could have been made available for parliamentary scrutiny of this Bill”—

 

which is surely our job. It continues:

 

“We emphasise that in any other circumstances provisions such as these which challenge established constitutional principles would not be acceptable”.

 

That brings me to Clause 4, which the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Belmont, just referred to, as did other noble Lords. 

 

It purports to provide guidance to members of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland in relation to the repeal of Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861: namely, the provisions banning abortion—the deliberate ending of the life of a child in the womb. 

 

This is a serious issue. This is the law of this land. “Procuring miscarriage” is an offence unless two doctors agree that one of the defences set out in the Abortion Act 1967 applies. So how can the Secretary of State issue guidance to another jurisdiction advising on the repeal of legislation that is current law in her own jurisdiction? 

 

As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said earlier, this is smoke and mirrors—and, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, it makes a nonsense. This is an absurdity, and on this point alone these ill-thought-through amendments ought to be dismissed.

 

In the mid-1990s, I accompanied a cross-community delegation of Members of Parliament—from the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Official Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party—to see John Major. 

 

We were given his assurance that he and the Conservative Government would insist that abortion would remain a matter to be settled in Northern Ireland. 

 

It troubles me that Clause 4 seeks to unsettle that agreement. In a Bill of such a limited and temporary nature, how can anyone reasonably suggest that an issue as contentious and sensitive as abortion should even be included for consideration?

 

In the Commons, the amendments that were introduced came at such short notice that many MPs did not even know that the House would divide. Karen Bradley, the Secretary of State, was right when she said that if the amendments were passed, which they were, it would put the Northern Ireland Civil Service in “an impossible position”. She went on to say that,

 

“the Bill cannot force Northern Ireland Departments to change the law”,

 

as the new clause seeks to do—a point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in his remarks earlier. The Secretary of State said:

 

“It would be totally contrary to the rule of law and the way the independence of the civil service across the whole United Kingdom operates”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/10/18; col. 385.]

 

In March of this year, 47 Members of this House, including former Cabinet Ministers, co-signed a letter to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland noting that legislation from Westminster would severely destabilise the devolution agreement. 

 

The Prime Minister says it would not be right for the United Kingdom Government to undermine the settlement agreement.

 

We have heard many references during the debate to things such as human rights. In December we will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that everyone has the right to life. 

 

There is no right to abortion in human rights law: let us be clear about that. Nowhere does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights refer to abortion being a human rights question.

 

There will be a chance to return to these issues in Committee, but let me conclude. 

 

Noble Lords do not have to agree with my substantive opposition to the taking of the life of a child in the womb, up to and even during birth in the case of a child with a disability—which results, in Great Britain, in one abortion every three minutes, or around 40 in the two hours that we have been debating this Bill so far, or some 9 million since 1967—or my noting that if that legislation had applied in Northern Ireland, 100,000 people would not be alive today who were born because the legislation does not apply there. 

 

Noble Lords do not have to agree with my view about this to be concerned about the provisions in this Bill. 

 

As parliamentarians, we have a duty to pass laws that make sense, a duty to uphold the principles of subsidiarity, a duty to resist the making of laws on the hoof, a duty to insist on proper scrutiny and debate, a duty to contest ideology and sloganeering, and a duty to respect the people of Northern Ireland.

 

 4.37 pm

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Sinn Féin’s decision to suspend Peadar Toibin for going against party policy on abortion underlines, yet again, the aggressive intolerance of the political classes.  

 

When the right to conscientiously object to the taking of an innocent life is suppressed, it tells you all you need to know about intolerance and ideology.

 

Parties – including those that call themselves liberal – and which  deny conscience, suppress free speech, and silence debate about the humanity of a child in the womb, undermine the very foundations on which free, diverse, and democratic societies are built. Peadar Toibin deserves our admiration for standing up to this attempt to silence him.

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/sinn-fein-suspends-peadar-toibin-for-going-against-party-policy-on-abortion-laws-882547.html&ct=ga&cd=CAEYCioUMTgzMDQxMzMyMzEwNjM3MzQ2NzYyHGI0OTE3OWI2ZGRmNTUwMDA6Y28udWs6ZW46R0I&usg=AFQjCNHJ1Fz7iVR9Nb7FnXHhT_6klx_i7g

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The Burkean:  July 2018 – what Edmund Burke might have made of Britain and Ireland’s abortion laws:

https://www.theburkean.co.uk/lord-alton-of-liverpool-edmund-burke-on-abortion/

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/magazine-post/alt-liberalism-at-westminster/

The mutant ideology that’s driving MPs to impose abortion on Northern Ireland: published June 15th 2018

The ‘alt-liberals’ are all-knowing, self-regarding and autocratic

The Northern Ireland minister Lord Duncan of Springbank recently remarked that the province’s insistence that the only lawful justification for abortion should be a threat to the mother’s life was “Victorian”. This ill-considered and patronising remark was not random. It was part of a concerted attempt to force abortion legislation on Northern Ireland.

The Conservative MPs Justine Greening and Amber Rudd have joined forces with Labour’s Stella Creasy, who goes even further, and who has been demanding the repeal of the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act. This would decriminalise abortion across the United Kingdom, removing the few remaining protections for an unborn child, and potentially permitting abortion up to term and the removal of conscience provisions.

Creasy and her allies have form, having persuaded the Conservative Government to pay £1,400 to pregnant women wishing to travel from Northern Ireland to Britain to end the life of their unborn child (with no comparable sum for women continuing their pregnancy).

In response, Theresa May has sent mixed messages, saying she supports change but then, under pressure from the Democratic Unionist MPs and Conservative MPs Fiona Bruce and Maria Caulfield, stating that the change should only be made by a restored Northern Ireland Assembly, not by Westminster.

The Prime Minister is absolutely right in insisting that abortion remain a devolved matter. I once served as a Northern Ireland party spokesman and was later part of the cross-community, cross-party delegation that successfully persuaded John Major to make abortion a devolved matter (as it is in Scotland too). This was part of the discussions around the 1995 framework documents that proposed North-South institutions and a Northern Ireland Assembly – paving the way for the Good Friday Agreement. Those trying to unpick these sensitive matters should tread with great care.

Significantly, the most recent vote on abortion within any UK legislature was 18 months ago in the Northern Ireland Assembly. It voted against a change to the law. But British political parties, once champions of devolution, have turned full circle when it comes to abortion.

This is only the latest example of what the philosopher John Gray calls “alt-liberalism”, a mutant version of liberal ideology: all-knowing, self-regarding and autocratic. It’s the phenomenon that led to Tim Farron packing his bags as Liberal Democrat leader, saying it had become impossible to reconcile his Christian faith with this new ideology. One Labour MP told me that he daren’t say what he believes for fear of retaliation. Free speech is going the same way as devolution and conscience.

The judiciary, meanwhile, is becoming increasingly politicised. Last week the Supreme Court found that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission had no legal standing in bringing its case challenging the North’s abortion laws. Yet this did not deter judges from offering a series of non-binding opinions.

Paradoxically, the court’s unanimous finding that there is no human rights requirement to allow for abortion on the grounds of disability has implications for Great Britain, where abortion up to birth on grounds of disability is both barbaric and discriminatory.

The court reaffirmed that there is no human right to abortion and there is nothing in the judgment to say that abortion on request is required by human rights law – but it’s worth remembering that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that everyone has the right to life.

I recently spoke at meetings in Lisburn and Belfast organised by the group Both Lives Matter. Great dismay was expressed about the abortion industry coming to Northern Ireland. A report was cited from the Times highlighting the 22 employees working for Marie Stopes International who were paid salaries of more than £100,000 in 2015.

The chief executive earned £420,000 (nearly four times that of the Prime Minister). Also mentioned were the conclusions of a Care Quality Commission investigation which found dead unborn babies in open bins in Marie Stopes abortion clinics. The commission reported that there had been nearly 400 botched abortions in just two months.

So before we excoriate Northern Ireland and its “Victorian” laws, think of the province as the perfect control group in a grim social science experiment that had a starting date of 1968. Fifty years later, in Northern Ireland’s control group there are 100,000 people alive (5 per cent of the population) who would not have been born if our laws had applied.

By contrast, in Great Britain there have been almost 9 million abortions: one abortion every three minutes, 20 every hour and 600 every working day, with one in five pregnancies now ended by abortion. We have abortion up to birth in the case of babies with disabilities – leading to 90 per cent of babies with Down’s syndrome being aborted – and of little girls merely because of their gender.

With perfect laboratory conditions, you would carefully study the evidence, look at the outcomes and draw conclusions. Again, one hundred thousand people are alive in Northern Ireland who would be dead had the 1967 Abortion Act applied there. Why would anyone want to change that – and what right do we have to impose such laws upon the people of Northern Ireland?

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Human Beings Are Not Trash

This moving  story, reported by the BBC, about a baby who survived an abortion underlines both the  vulnerable  humanity of the lives we end and the reality that there is no such thing as a safe abortion for a baby in the womb. This woman began her life as discarded clinical waste but the actions of a good nurse and a loving family point to the radical alternatives we should be able to offer the babies whose lives are ended every three minutes in Britain.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-44357373

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Parliament: June 6th 2018

Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)

My Lords, will the Minister agree that the caricature of the people of Northern Ireland as living in some antediluvian society has to be measured against a law that has led in Great Britain to some 9 million abortions—that is one every three minutes, 20 every single hour and 600 every working day, with one in five pregnancies now ended by abortion, and abortion up to and even during birth in the case of babies with disabilities, leading to 90% of all babies with Down’s syndrome being aborted. Is that something that we have a right to export to Northern Ireland, or do we not have a belief in devolution and the right of people in Northern Ireland to make up their mind on that issue for themselves?

 

Lord O’Shaughnessy (Government Minister)

 

I would not presume to make a caricature of the people of Northern Ireland in one way or another. What this debate has demonstrated is that there are deeply held beliefs in this area and, of course, there are significant consequences of decisions on abortion law in one regard or another. It has emphasised that those decisions, which are incredibly significant, ought to be made by the people whom they affect, via the elected representatives whom they put in power.

==============

 

Supreme Court and Northern Ireland  

The coverage of the Supreme Court ruling has been highly selective.  These are simply non binding opinions and the Court found that the NIHRC had no standing to bring the case.

The unanimous finding of the Court was that there is no human rights requirement to allow for abortion on the grounds of disability.  

The Court again reaffirmed that there is no human right to abortion and that there is nothing in the judgment to say that abortion on request is required by human rights law

By contrast, the Universal Declaration of Human  Rights  declares that everyone has the right to life, and see: 

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/article-2-right-life

 Tell that to the 600 babies whose lives are ended every day in Britain.

======================

 The Taking Of Life Is Nothing To Celebrate

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/kturley/lord-alton-makes-impassioned-speech-after-irish-abortion-referendum-result

Ireland’s vote to remove constitutional protection for babies in the womb is being celebrated and hailed as a great triumph for humanity. It’s nothing of the kind. 

 

The cruel and barbaric procedures used to abort babies are an infamy – the antithesis of everything that a civilised society should hold dear. 

 

Every three minutes of every day a baby is aborted in Britain – nearly 9 million since England paved the way for legal abortion. Some, with disabilities, are aborted up to birth. 

 

Those who have exported this anti life culture, and those who have relentlessly promoted it, will one day be seen to have been on the wrong side of history. For now, we must simply weep for the children whose lives will be lost.

There’s nothing here for them to celebrate.

 Both Lives Matter

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Speaking in Clitheroe, at the Bank Holiday Monday Right to Life Whit Walk, David Alton reminded walkers that St.Teresa of Calcutta had said that in the struggle to safeguard the sanctity of human life that “we are not called upon to be successful but faithful.”

 

Reflecting on the Irish referendum David Alton said that the sponsored walk through Lancashire’s Ribble Valley, to raise funds for the Right to Life charity, was “a chance to both witness and to express solidarity with the three quarters of a million Irish people who had voted against removing protection for the unborn child from the Irish constitution.” He said “they campaigned under the slogans that “both lives mater” and that “we must always “love both” – mother and child –this should remain the clarion call of the pro-life movement.”

 

He said that “no one ever said this would be an easy fight paved with victories but every life saved, every mind changed, is how we must measure success.”

 

David Alton, whose late mother was a native Irish speaker has, along with his children, Irish as well as British Citizenship; and he reflected that anyone who loved Ireland and its people would inevitably “feel dispirited and distressed by this outcome.”

 

He added that “every abortion is a tragedy .   With one abortion in England, every three minutes, Ireland will come to regret following the British law – a law that  allows abortion up to and even during birth in the case of disability – leading to the death of 90% of babies with Downs Syndrome.”

 

He said: “It was bordering on the obscene to watch people celebrating an event that will lead to the ending of innocent life. Ireland will become like Ramah where Rachel was found weeping and mourning the children that are no more.”

 

The spectacle of crowds gathering in castle Yard in Dublin, where mobs once gathered to cheer the public  execution of prisoners, was distasteful in the extreme.  And now they will seek to do the same in Northern Ireland.

 

“It is beyond belief that liberals, who say they believe in devolution, quickly abandon their belief in devolution when it comes to abortion. They gather in the restaurants of Richmond Upon Thames or the Islington wine bars and plot to impose their political ideology and agenda on the people of Northern Ireland – where 100,000 people are alive today, 5% of the population, precisely because Northern Ireland refused to introduce British abortion laws.  This is a matter to be settled in the North by the North and not by Westminster.

 

Lord Alton said that “time and again those in favour of abortion, embryo experimentation, coercive overseas abortions,  and euthanasia have relentlessly campaigned to change laws that since Hippocrates crafted the Hippocratic Oath – with explicit condemnation of abortion and euthanasia –  have served society well. There is no such thing as a safe abortion for the baby in the womb.”

 

Quoting G.K.Chesterton he said that “when we marry the spirit of the age we become widowers in the next” and added that when we kill the unborn we will be childless in the next.

 

He said that “ In Britain and now Ireland this is the most dangerous time in history to be an unborn child. For now we weep and stand with Rachel but, as the baton passes to the next generation, we will redouble our efforts until we change hearts, minds, attitudes, culture, and laws. ”

Both Lives Matter1.jpg

 

8 million Reasons For Voting NO: Click on this link –

https://www.davidalton.net/2018/01/12/8894355-reasons-why-ireland-should-continue-to-uphold-the-sanctity-and-dignity-of-every-human-life-because-every-life-matters-count-the-missing-britons-and-the-people-of-ireland-would-be-2/

 

Alive but not born yet.jpg

 

Larissa Nolan – and a point of view that deserves to be heard

I am a feminist, a progressive, a liberal and a free thinker – and for all these reasons, I am voting No on Friday.

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/health-news/larissa-nolan-comment-im-voting-12585262

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/22/ireland-having-discuss-truth-abortion-way-britain-never-has/

And hear this speech by Maria Steen to the Citizens’ Assembly

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4j08-_6j_U?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]

Smoking may well kill your unborn child – Abortion most certainly does. There’s no such thing as a safe abortion for a baby in the womb.

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Article from the Irish Times

Removal of Eighth would create law more inhumane than Britain’s

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/removal-of-eighth-would-create-law-more-inhumane-than-britain-s-1.3480588?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fremoval-of-eighth-would-create-law-more-inhumane-than-britain-s-1.3480588

Recently, the Irish Government released a paper setting out 21 principles that would inform their prospective abortion legislation, were the Eighth Amendment to be repealed.

Looking at this from a British perspective, it’s worryingly hard not to see shadows of our own law, the Abortion Act 1967.

When it was introduced just over 50 years ago, the 1967 Act was sold to the public and to the Westminster Parliament as a restrictive law. The evidence of half a century, however, shows this claim was utterly empty. The everyday reality in Britain today is that abortion is available on demand, for any reason, up to 24 weeks. In 2016, just over one in five British pregnancies ended in abortion.

The false assurances we heard in 1967 are echoed by certain pro-repeal politicians today, as they claim that abortion law after any removal of Eighth Amendment protections for unborn children would be modest and more restrictive than those across the Irish Sea. The truth is that, if anything, it would create a law not just as permissive and inhumane as Britain’s – but even more so.

The reason why the Abortion Act has led to abortion on demand is because section 1(1)(a) of the Act allows abortion under what we now call Ground C: when two doctors agree that “the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family”.

‘Mental health’ reasons

Some 97 per cent of all abortions in Britain take place under this ground; 99.8 per cent of which are carried out for “mental health” reasons.

Of course, no evidence exists that abortion helps safeguard mental health. As pro-choice Prof David Fergusson reported in a longitudinal study on mental health and abortion, the “evidence clearly poses a challenge to the use of psychiatric reasons to justify abortion”. Uncoincidentally, no verification is required regarding the alleged underlying psychological condition, nor is even one of the two doctors required to be formally qualified to be able to identify such a condition.

As a consequence of this, abortion in Britain can take place for functionally any reason whatever up to 24 weeks – the explicit “upper limit” introduced in 1990. This has meant a situation of normalised laxity, which a media investigation in 2012 showed even allows for the ugly spectre of misogynistic sex-selective abortion.

This permissive abortion system has not only led to the destruction of girls in the womb, but to the deeply tragic suicides of young women. Examples include 13-year-old Ashli Blake in 2014, whose abortion helped to cover up her sexual abuse; young mother Jade Rees in 2015 after the abortion of her baby daughter, and the artist Emma Beck in 2007 after the abortion of her twin girls.

Compare the British model to the principles of the Irish Government’s Health paper on prospective abortion legislation. These state that under any legislation they introduce, abortions would be provided “without indication” (ie on demand) up to 12 weeks, but also on the grounds of “risk to health” to a pregnant woman with no gestational restriction.

Moreover, no distinction would be made between physical and mental health. This would establish the same supposedly limited “health grounds” for abortion as in UK law, but by crucial contrast, with no “upper limit” applying in such cases. This would lead to a de facto situation of abortion on demand, for any reason, up to birth.

Sex-selective abortion

“Any reason” would include the sex-selective abortion that has been shown to be possible in British practice. The Stop Gendercide campaign started by women’s groups Jeena International and Karma Nirvana, in analysing currently debated proposals for permissive abortion on the Isle of Man, has noted that due to improvements in prenatal testing technology, foetal gender can now be detected after seven weeks’ gestation. Not only would introducing abortion on demand up to 12 weeks formally legalise sex-selective abortion in the first trimester, but providing de facto abortion on demand would enable sex-selection throughout all of pregnancy.

While the Irish Government’s proposals may seem restrictive, just as the Abortion Act did in the 1960s, long British experience shows that any legislation enacted based on their “principles” would introduce a radically permissive abortion regime all throughout pregnancy.

Ireland would suffer a system even more extreme than the British, which itself has destroyed so many lives, not only of unborn children, but of pregnant mothers. Both lives matter: every life counts.

In considering how to vote in the upcoming referendum, I hope the Irish public realises that if the Eighth Amendment is repealed, the Republic would go down a road even darker than that of British practice. Knowing this, I hope voters will opt instead to Vote No to maintain Ireland’s Constitution as a civilised standard of human dignity and rights.

David Alton is a member of the House of Lords and a long-time anti-abortion campaigner

Join The Rebellion And Vote No – Because Both Lives Matter

Both Lives Matter1.jpg

Unborn child and smoking kills 2

Smoking may well kill your unborn child – Abortion most certainly does.

Secular and Religious Voices Unite To Urge Ireland To Vote No And To Insist That Both Lives Matter

As Ireland faces a referendum on whether to introduce British-style laws to allow the abortion of babies in the womb (and which in Britain have led to one abortion every three minutes) there has been an increase in opposition to such change from secular and religious voices.

Wendy Grace in a really succinct and well-argued article puts the case for a No vote which deserves to be shared far and wide. https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/a-no-vote-is-our-opportunity-to-do-better-for-women-and-babies-36878030.html#

Ms Grace says “We are at a key moment in Irish history where we have the opportunity to be truly progressive, unlike countries in the past, we cannot plead ignorance, with this knowledge comes a responsibility.

 

“I refuse to be part of a system that pits mother against baby. This is not equality. Abortion is the tragic sign that the real needs of women are not being met.

A No vote is our opportunity to unite together and say we can do a lot better for women, for babies, for Ireland.”

The latest poll in the Sunday Independent shows more and more people joining the rebellion: You can find it here-https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/abortion-referendum/poll-young-urban-women-giving-yes-side-referendum-edge-but-it-is-a-narrow-lead-36877996.html.  While Yes remains in the lead, their lead has dramatically declined since February.

Archbishop Eamon Martin has spoken out with great clarity and profession arguing that both lives matter. His interview to the Belfast Telegraph can be read at:

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/archbishop-martin-will-continue-to-push-for-pope-to-visit-northern-ireland-36882908.html

The Archbishop said: “Those who are voting can be in no doubt that this is not just the removal of an amendment in order to be compassionate in hard cases, such as rape, incest or life-threatening situations.

 

“This is the removal of the only remaining protection for unborn life in order to introduce a very liberal abortion regime which, I believe, the people of Ireland do not want.

 

“The Supreme Court has told us that once you remove the eighth amendment, there is no recognition at all for the rights of the unborn.

 

“Once that is gone, I find it difficult to believe that we would not move to probably becoming one of the most liberal abortion regimes in the world.

 

“Once we elevate personal choice above the right to life, where do we stand?

 

“If we enshrine in our laws the right to choose to end life, where does that place us? I see this not as a Church versus State battle, but as an opportunity to highlight that we must choose life and not death.”

Archbishop Martin said that abortion was “not a matter of private choice but of the common good”. “Society can never tolerate the direct and intentional taking of innocent human life, and I am conscious that many of my brothers and sisters in other Christian denominations and in other faiths hold a similar view.”

He also stated his belief that the outcome of the referendum was not a foregone conclusion and that many people are still undecided.

“I would like to think that when people go in to vote that they will pause, listen to their heartbeat, look at the fingerprints, and realise they have had these since they themselves were in the womb.

 

“I would love them to think of two lives as they make their decision.”

The Irish Times also has a report on a host of pastoral letters read out in parishes across the Republic this past Sunday. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/bishops-warn-against-abortion-on-demand-1.3487675

Underlining that this view is echoed across denominations, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, Ken Good, has trenchantly spelt out his opposition to the proposed changes https://www.donegalnow.com/news/bishop-derry-raphoe-rt-rev-ken-good-referendum-eighth-amendment/223252.

He says:

“Often, in the past, the protection of vulnerable women and children in Ireland left a lot to be desired, but legislating now to allow the lives of the most defenceless among us to be terminated is not the answer.”

 

For the Child In The Womb there is no such thing as “a safe abortion”…

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/removal-of-eighth-would-create-law-more-inhumane-than-britain-s-1.3480588?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fremoval-of-eighth-would-create-law-more-inhumane-than-britain-s-1.3480588

Join The Rebellion: 8  million reasons for voting no… Opposition echoed by Ireland’s former Taoiseach

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/former-taoiseach-says-ireland-should-be-proud-of-eighth-amendment-1.3423831 <https://protect-eu.mimecast.com/s/h-9FCK13nCqQRY3cvbRYw?domain=irishtimes.com&gt;

8 million Reasons For Voting NO: Click on this link –

https://www.davidalton.net/2018/01/12/8894355-reasons-why-ireland-should-continue-to-uphold-the-sanctity-and-dignity-of-every-human-life-because-every-life-matters-count-the-missing-britons-and-the-people-of-ireland-would-be-2/

 

Lord David Alton

For 18 years David Alton was a Member of the House of Commons and today he is an Independent Crossbench Life Peer in the UK House of Lords.

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