Ireland May Ban Pro-Life Prayer Rallies

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by Alexander Slavsky • ChurchMilitant.com • June 1, 2018

After legalizing abortion, lawmakers now want to restrict pro-life activity

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DUBLIN (ChurchMilitant.com) - After legalizing abortion last week, Ireland is considering banning pro-lifers from praying outside of abortion mills.

The May 25 referendum saw 66 percent of the Emerald Isle's 2.15 million voters throwing their support behind the killing of unborn children. Pro-abortion politicians are now weighing in ways to prevent pro-lifers from ministering to women outside of abortuaries.

Health Minister Simon Harris is seeking to create "buffer" zones to shield abortion-seeking women from "abusive or offensive images," which are nothing more than images of unborn babies. The proposed legislation will form part of those laws being considered to legalize abortion for any reason up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

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But pro-lifers are saying the buffer zone proposal is another attempt to "silence" the voices of those who provide mothers with information and support, including the risks of abortion and facts about the developing unborn baby.

This comes as the Irish government is also considering subsidizing the cost of abortions, allowing for the murder of an unborn child to be accessible for any woman, regardless of economic circumstances. And Ireland is thinking of keeping abortion within its state system, preventing the set-up of outside abortion giants.

"Our priority is that no woman is treated differently because of her economic circumstances — part of the reason we legalized abortion is to ensure women no longer turned to the web for abortion pills," a source recently told the Irish Independent. "We want women to have a full range of options open to them, and while some will opt to have a termination after the 72-hour pause period, others will not."

Lawmakers are considering whether to extend the summer session in order to pass abortion legislation that would also allow abortion for up to six months for certain "mental health" reasons. The law could go into effect as early as January 2019. But there is fear that Ireland's abortion law will mirror Britain's, where one in five pregnancies end in abortion every year.

In Britain, abortion is legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, and most killings are owing to "mental health," comprising 97 percent of abortions in England and Wales in 2016.

Before last Friday's abortion vote, pro-lifers exposed the "extreme" nature of the referendum that was the most significant since 1983. The Eighth Amendment — the constitutional provision protecting the right to life for the unborn — was passed that same year with 67 percent approval.

Pro-lifers are saying the buffer zone proposal is another attempt to 'silence' the voices of those who provide mothers with information and support.

The Eighth Amendment declared that "the State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right."

Doctor Eamon McGuinness, past chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told The Irish Times in April that the Eighth Amendment "prevents Irish doctors from deliberately, as an elective matter, causing the death of an unborn child. It awards to the child in the womb the right to have their life protected in Irish hospitals."

People with disabilities and their families warned that the decriminalization of abortion could result in a spike in the number of terminations owing to Down syndrome and fetal abnormalities.

"'Kill' is such a horrible word, it's such a nasty word, but how else do I describe taking a life before its natural end, that someone could choose to end another person's life that is a human, maybe a small human, but still, nonetheless, a human?" said Anne Mulligan, an Irish mother who has a daughter with Down syndrome.

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