League Executive Director Eric Scheidler and Bryan Kemper of Stand True protesting abortion in Dublin
Hilary White writes from Ireland that “D-day for Ireland’s pro-life laws looms: urgent prayers requested.”
The facts are even more sinister than Miss White reveals in her call for prayers. The decision this Thursday could, and will, if passed, introduce an evil we can hardly imagine. It could, for the first time ever, be a step towards establishing abortion as an internationally recognized “human right.”
Ireland has been one of only three European countries that have banned abortion, the others being Poland and the tiny Malta.
A Looming Disaster
Leading abortion opponents have seen a disaster coming for some time, ever since Ireland joined eleven other countries in the Single European Act some years ago. Of these eleven, only Belgium did not have legal abortion, but it shortly followed the others.
At the time, I spent a week in Ireland doing radio shows and putting up posters, trying to convince the Bishops and other powerful leaders to keep clear of this union, but to no avail. They joined. And it was later the Lisbon Treaty that sealed the package.
Now the European Court of Human Rights is poised to hand down a ruling that will negate the Irish Constitution that bans abortion.
This threat to the lives of the unborn comes after two Irish women and a Lithuanian woman living in Ireland claimed that having to go to the UK for their abortions violated their human rights. Irish pro-lifers have seen a travesty like this coming for years, many predicting that Ireland might be forced to join all the other nations in their health plans that had legal abortion.
Yet even the Single European Act, the Lisbon Treaty, nor any other international treaty has ever considered abortion to be a “human right.” So now Ireland desperately needs our prayers.
Without Life, All Other Rights Are Meaningless
White writes that without the right to life, all other rights become meaningless, echoing Pope John Paul II’s call for protecting the unborn when he visited Ireland some years ago.
Fortunately, Northern Ireland, though a part of the United Kingdom, does not have legal abortion. This is mostly due to the efforts of people like Bernadette Smyth, who, as head of Precious Life in Belfast, has kept Northern Ireland abortion free through a presence at Westminster when a law that would have made Northern Ireland conform to the ultra-liberal pro-abortion law in Great Britain was under discussion.
Bernadette and her crew convinced Westminster to postpone discussion of the issue until Parliament adjourned, delaying discussion of the issue for another year. They bought time and won the battle — at least for the present.
Now pray hard that the people of the Republic of Ireland, and their babies, win this one.
