GALWAY, IRELAND — In countries with liberal abortion laws, like the U.S., pro-choice advocates argue that a ban on abortion would be disastrous for women. Pro-choicers warn of back-alley abortions, of women burdened with unwanted children, of a dystopian society in which women are little more than vessels, with no say over their lives.
For 35 years, since the 8th Amendment to Ireland’s constitution banned abortion, my country has proved that argument wrong.
Abortion has been illegal under the amendment since 1983, except where there is a real and substantial threat to the life of the mother. The result has been one of the lowest abortion rates in the Western world. For comparison, last year the abortion rate in the U.S. hit a 30-year low, 14.6 abortions per 1,000 women. In Ireland, the rate is about one third of that — just 5.7 per 1,000 women.
Ours is not a country where women die, are denied opportunities, or are forced to become parents. It is, however, a country where abortion is not the first solution presented to a mother, and where she is encouraged and supported to make a more life-affirming choice.
The consequence of Ireland’s abortion ban and the accompanying culture of life has been, when compared to the culturally similar United Kingdom (whose abortion laws are liberal), about 100,000 fewer abortions over the lifetime of the 8th Amendment than would have taken place.
That is 100,000 people alive who would otherwise not have been born. Many of them are children with disabilities, like Down syndrome, who are protected in Ireland. In the rest of Europe, a child with a disability makes it to birth less and less often, as many of them are identified and eliminated during pregnancy.
Friday, Ireland will go to the polls in a referendum to repeal the 8th Amendment. If there is a “yes” vote and the amendment is removed from the constitution, the liberal government has pledged to introduce unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks, and abortion up to 24 weeks on the grounds of physical or mental health risks to a woman.
For those of us campaigning to retain the amendment, the campaign has been sad and frustrating. George Soros’s Open Society Foundation has poured vast sums of money into Ireland to campaign for liberalized abortion laws. The repeal campaign has, with the support of Ireland’s uniformly liberal media, relentlessly focused on a small number of cases where a woman is raped, or where her child is so ill it may not survive. “Compassion” has been their slogan, and the rights of the child have been ignored.
The NO campaign has fought a hard and heroic battle, pointing out the consequences of legalization — increased abortion rates, a silent shift toward a culture of eugenics, and pressure exerted on women to have abortions if they wish to sustain a career, or a relationship.
At the heart of the debate is whether the child in the womb is to have any rights in Ireland’s constitution at all. The YES campaign seeks to make Ireland the first country in the world to eliminate, by popular vote, a human right to life. If it is successful, it will be a tragedy of historic proportions.
The 1916 Easter Rising was my country’s most famous rebellion against British rule. The leaders of the Rising laid out the Irish Proclamation of Independence, inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The Proclamation commits the government and the people of Ireland to “Cherish all the children of our nation equally.”
Today, 102 years after those words were written, Ireland will decide whether to keep faith with them or whether to join the long and sad list of nations that have decided that somehow women’s equality requires the right to kill a baby in the womb. For 35 years, Irish women have thrived without that right. Today, I hope many of them will join with me in saying NO to the right to kill.
Declan Ganley of Ireland, chairman and CEO of Rivada Networks, is active in the Save the Eighth campaign.
