News
Featured Image
Justin Trudeau at Gay Pride parade.Shutterstock

MONTREAL, August 17, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Ireland’s first openly homosexual prime minister is about to become the first foreign head of state to march in a homosexual pride parade with Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Ireland’s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will join Trudeau in Montreal’s Pride Parade on Sunday as part of his four-day visit to Canada that begins Saturday, the Liberal government announced earlier this week.

The two men, who first met in July in Dublin, will discuss the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), as well as “issues related to diversity and inclusion,” reports the Toronto Globe and Mail.

But if Canada’s abortion activists have their way, pro-abortion Trudeau will also lobby the allegedly pro-life Varadkar to push for legal abortion in Ireland.

“With the Irish Prime Minister coming to Canada, there is a really great opportunity to talk about women’s rights, reproductive rights and access to abortion,” Meghan Doherty of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights told the Globe.

“The [Canadian] Prime Minister's stance … could be quite persuasive with the Irish government to encourage them to be progressive, to respect women's rights and to be seen as the modern country that it is.”

The 38-year-old son of an Indian immigrant father and Irish mother, Varadkar was voted in as leader of the ruling Fine Gael Party on June 2, and elected taoiseach, or prime minister, by Ireland’s parliament two weeks later.

But while the liberal left and mainstream media laud Varadkar’s homosexuality and support of homosexual “marriage,” they consider him a threat when it comes to abortion.

A member of the Fine Gael Party, Varadkar described himself as “pro-life” when minister for health in 2014, according to buzz.ie.

“There are two lives involved in any pregnancy. For that reason, like most people in the country, I do not support abortion on request or on demand,” he told the Irish parliament at the time.

Indeed, the left-leaning Guardian described Varadkar as a “disaster for Ireland’s campaign for reproductive rights, and absolutely the wrong person to preside over the abortion referendum that he has inherited as a political inevitability.”

Donagh O’Callaghan of Dublin’s Life Institute has a different view.

He agrees that by the time Varadkar became prime minister, the decision on the referendum was, for all practical purposes, already set.

Pro-abortion groups, abetted by Irish secular media, had been lobbying aggressively for years for a referendum to repeal the Irish Constitution’s 8th Amendment, which declares the right to life of child in the womb is equal to that of his or her mother.

A day after taking office, Varadkar announced a referendum on the 8th Amendment for the spring of 2018.

Varadkar, who is a doctor, does not support abortion on demand, O’Callaghan told LifeSiteNews.

“But I wouldn’t say adamantly he’s pro-life. That would be misleading, to say the least,” he said, adding Varadkar could be described as a “diplomat” on the matter.

In 2013, then-prime minister Enda Kenny’s government liberalized Ireland’s law to allow abortions for women who were purportedly suicidal because of their pregnancy.

Kenny’s Fine Gael party enforced party discipline on the vote and kicked out pro-life dissenters, O’Callaghan said. Varadkar was not one of them.

“He’s not going to put his neck out for pro-life, I can tell you that much.”

But when it comes to Trudeau, Varadkar should tell his Canadian counterpart to “let our country deal with this issue,” O’Callaghan said.

Canada, he pointed out, “has gone a step too far euthanizing people. We don’t want to go down that route. … We believe in a more compassionate society.”

Trudeau “should just mind his own business,” he added. “Canada has enough problems of its own. They don’t need to be telling the Irish what to do.”

RELATED

Irish citizens are not in favor of abortion-on-demand. Why is the gov’t pushing for it?

‘Appalling’: Irish gov’t body calls for unrestricted abortion