A year ago this week, the Irish government passed legislation that allowed abortion without gestational time limits if the mother was deemed to be suicidal. Now the same government has issued practice guidelines for health care providers that pro-life advocates have said open the restrictions even further.
Vowing not to quit until the legislation is “fully repealed,” a spokesman for Pro-Life Campaign told LifeSiteNews today that they are also concentrating on opposing the implementation of the guidelines.
“The fact that it took a year to produce the guidelines is yet further proof that the legislation was not ‘emergency legislation’ needed to save women’s lives as Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Enda Kenny and others claimed in 2013.”
“There were obviously political reasons behind holding back issuing the guidelines until after the local and European elections.”
Senior members of the main government party Fine Gael, which had run on a platform promising never to legislate for abortion, stated repeatedly during the debates over the bill both in Parliament and in the media that the bill was intended to “save women’s lives.”
The Pro-Life Campaign’s deputy chairperson, Cora Sherlock, said in a media release, “The government's consistently misleading presentation of the abortion law has resulted in widespread public confusion over what the new law actually involves.”
The pro-life group has launched a campaign called “The Simple Truth” to challenge “the government’s spin to get the truth out about the kind of abortion regime that has been introduced.”
Sherlock added, “The Taoiseach has stuck to the mantra that the legislation was necessary to save women's lives. But the government knows perfectly well that Ireland, without abortion, was one of the safest countries in the world for pregnant women.”
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At the same time, some Fine Gael TDs sought guarantees that the guidelines would be “very restrictive.”
“Of course the guidelines are not in the least bit restrictive and as you would expect they fully back up what the legislation provides for,” Wendy Grace, Pro-life Campaign’s press officer told LifeSiteNews.
“It is now legal in Ireland for two pro-choice psychiatrists to sanction the taking of unborn human life without having to produce any medical evidence to justify the decision. That is de facto abortion on demand.”
Disturbingly, Grace said there is no way of finding out how many abortions are being committed under the new law because the Act contained no mechanism for keeping such records. The Department of Health has said it will issue a report every June on how the law is functioning that will include the numbers of abortions that have taken place. The first report is scheduled to be issued in June 2015.
“We do know that there are quite a few strident pro-abortion doctors in Ireland who are determined to start activating the law.”
Grace added that the legislation provides no avenue for doctors, nurses, or other health professionals to opt out of procedures they cannot in conscience conduct.
“Doctors are not obliged to facilitate abortions on every ground listed but they have an obligation to refer women to doctors who will carry out the abortion. This in effect makes any freedom of conscience provision worthless,” she said.
Legal representatives of all the pro-life groups “are studying the situation very carefully,” she said, to find ways the new law can be overturned. “We know we have to keep the momentum going so that the law doesn’t become embedded and abortion normalised.”
To that end, Youth Defence has launched a high-profile new campaign also aimed at informing the public on the political background of the Act.
Youth Defence is staging a nationwide Roadshow visiting 18 towns and cities to hold protests at the constituency offices of the Fine Gael TDs who supported the bill “to remind Fine Gael that pro-life voters haven’t gone away.” Protests are held following a leafleting and petition drive that will register voters for the next election.
“We’re here to remind the public of what Fine Gael TDs around the country voted for, namely, abortion until birth,” the group states.
“The party broke their pro-life promise and our protests over the next 10 days confronts them with the reality of what the legislation will entail,” said Clare Molloy of Youth Defence. Their Pro-Life Voter Awareness Register has already attracted some 100,000 voters.