In May, Ireland overwhelmingly voted to legalize abortion. It had been illegal for decades and now, as soon as the official bill passes, abortions will commence Jan. 1, 2019. However, based on the past several days of intense debate about the bill, it’s clear that the philosophy of being pro-choice is colliding with the gruesome reality of abortions.
This is Ireland’s sad, new predicament, one they were not equipped to face and one that pro-choice lawmakers foisted on the Irish people by arguing for abortion based on “choice” and being “pro-woman,” rather than informing them of the grisly reality.
Even though Ireland overturned its referendum that had banned abortion, the specifics of how abortions would be carried out needed to be described in a bill and then passed. I’m sure the more liberal, pro-choice politicians thought this would be easy, but that has not been proven to be the case.
The minister of health and the Dail, the Irish legislature, have been relentlessly debating specifics of the bill. Much of Ireland, including many of its healthcare professionals, don’t like it. The proposed bill would legalize abortion for up to 12 weeks of pregnancy and even up to six months, depending on the reason. In this bill, taxpayers will be forced to pay for abortions, and the government will “force Catholic hospitals to provide them.” While there is an allowance for doctors to opt out under “religious conscience,” it is limited.
The Irish Times reported that the Minister for Health Simon Harris “plans to introduce a [General Practitioner]-led abortion service for terminations under nine weeks from January 2019, once the legislation is passed in the Dail.”
Ireland is one of the few countries in the world whose abortion services are offered through a general practitioner rather than through a trained abortion doctor via a clinic. This might not seem like a big deal, but picture it this way: Imagine a scenario where two pregnant women enter the same emergency room and one has determined to have an abortion and another has been in a car accident and needs doctors to save her life and her baby’s life, and you’ll see why abortion via general practitioner seems at odds with their oath.
In a meeting with politicians and 300 health professionals, at least 40 walked out in protest over the issue of conscientious objection to the provision of abortion services because they came with so many parameters. The group who walked out claimed general practitioners believe a “serious crisis now exists that the Government cannot ignore regarding the rollout of GP-led abortion services.” The Irish Examiner reports 500 nurses and midwives signed a petition to Harris urging him to support better conscience protections. According to this bill, even if health professionals object due to religious conscience, they still must refer the patient to a qualified doctor who will perform the service.
Earlier, Harris said while doctors would continue to have the right to opt out if they did not want to provide abortion services, this did not mean they could “give women the cold shoulder.” He said, “The law on abortion is changing; the law on conscientious objection is not changing.”
Indeed, even though the law has changed, or is changing, as Harris says, some in Ireland are still grappling with the ethics of abortion. In an opinion piece in the Irish Times, William Binchy, an adjunct professor of law at Trinity College Dublin wrote,
He writes that now the referendum to overturn the ban has passed, Harris is taking the new legalities of abortion too far.
This is a fair and important criticism. This is also what pro-life advocates in America warned Irish citizens of before the votes were cast. Pro-life advocates in Ireland also tried to warn Ireland what it was getting into. Once it’s okay to terminate babies in the womb, a lot of things become muddier, messier, and more and more ethical violations fall through the cracks.
What Ireland’s eleventh-hour fight over abortion demonstrates is the importance of knowledge and education. Many Irish people were simply unaware of what abortion looks like because it had not existed in their country.
Ireland’s pro-choice lawmakers should be disgraced for keeping their constituents in the dark about abortion and, most importantly, that the grim realities of abortion don’t look at all like a simple “Repeal the 8th” wrapped in a heart-shaped slogan.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
