DUBLIN, January 21, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pro-life and national sovereignty leaders in Ireland are calling for Irish voters to focus on the country’s constitution, particularly its protections for the unborn, in the upcoming general election. The Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland announced yesterday that the country will hold general elections on Friday March 11th.
The country is reeling after its sudden plunge into economic chaos that necessitated a massive debt bailout by the European Union that is expected to have significant long-term consequences. News reports of returning emigrants being refused social benefits because of punishing austerity measures, slashing of minimum wages, tax hikes and thousands leaving the country to find work abroad have shocked the public.
But Niamh Uí Bhriain of the Life Institute told LifeSiteNews.com today that the Irish pro-life network is approaching candidates to emphasize the importance of upholding Ireland’s ban on abortion, even, or especially, in the midst of the economic crisis.
“We’ve seen the Labour Party’s vote slip after they declared support for the introduction of abortion but we need to press hard to ensure that voters – who tend to be understandably occupied with the economic crisis – know just how important it is to uphold our pro-life ethics at this critical time.”
She warned that pro-abortion politicians would endeavor to take advantage of the economic crisis to push through a “viciously anti-life agenda.”
Rebecca Roughneen of the country’s leading pro-life lobby and education group, Youth Defence, told LSN that they would be working to remind voters to find out exactly where candidates stand on life issues.
“We’ll be explaining that it’s not enough for candidates to say ‘I’m pro-life,’ they need to give a guarantee that they won’t allow abortion to be legalized,” she said.
During the debates last year over the ratification of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, in which Ireland played a key role, the current government ridiculed opposition warnings of a coming economic disaster. “No” campaigners had warned that the Lisbon Treaty would threaten Ireland’s economic self-governance and constitutional protections for human life.
Cóir, the Irish sovereignty organization that led the “No to Lisbon” campaign, has called on the Irish people to defend the “right of Ireland as a sovereign nation to ban the killing of children.”
Cóir spokesman Richard Greene said that the recent European Court of Human Rights ruling which sought to impose abortion on Ireland was an act of “gross interference which had served to emphasise the desire of foreign institutions to overrule the Irish people, and had made abortion a key issue in the general election.”
Patrick Buckley, Ireland and EU representative of the UK-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said that none of the main Irish parties can be trusted to make protection of Ireland’s pro-life laws a priority.
“I would encourage all my Irish colleagues to contact representatives of all parties to clarify their position on the critical social issues such as the right to life of the unborn and to vote only for pro-life, pro-family candidates.”
He warned it would be a “grave error” for the parties to focus only on economic policies “when there are equally disastrous social policies that require urgent attention.”