Your vote is being used to push abortion on demand to 6 months

Yesterday, the Health Committee in the Dáil heard that Ireland’s abortion laws should be extended so that abortion on demand is made legal until 6 months in Ireland. 

The meeting has, of course, been well flagged in advance by the media who use these events then to repeatedly report on what is being demanded – even though those demands would be be a breach of the promises made to you, the voter, in the 2018 abortion referendum. 

The National Women’s Council are leading the charge in this instance and, now that the 8th has been repealed, they are being open and honest about what they want legalised in regard to abortion. 

They are demanding – and this is a direct quote – that “abortion be available on request up to viability”. 

Unless you have no empathy at all, your heart might have skipped a beat there. Abortion up to viability? Up to 24 weeks? To 6 months? Most people will find that a very extreme and cruel position. 

Here’s what a preborn baby looks like at 6 months.  And what a woman looks like when she’s 6 months pregnant. 

C: Composite; NvL / Shutterstock

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Polls have repeatedly shown that public opinion in Ireland, and elsewhere, opposes late-term abortion. If you were a reluctant ‘Yes’ voter in 2018, you may be shocked that your vote is now being used to push abortion on demand right up to 6 months of pregnancy.

Did you think that when you voted Yes you were allowing abortions to be performed until 6 months for any reason at all? This is a truly gruesome, horrific procedure. It would take the coldest of hearts to argue that killing a baby at 6 months gestation should simply be a matter of ‘choice’. 

Yet this is what the National Women’s Council (NWC) – who are unelected and unaccountable  by the way – are now calling for, just three years after repeal. 

If you voted Yes to repeal the 8th, did you think that your vote would be used to demand that abortion be legalised “on request” – for any reason at all – up until 6 months? Of course you didn’t, because you were explicitly told, repeatedly, that wouldn’t happen. 

Remember Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney expressly saying that there would be no late-term abortions? Remember Simon Harris saying that any notion of abortion at six months was a “big lie”. Remember the attack on the Save the 8th campaign for trying to warn voters what would happen? 

   

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Well it’s easy to see what ‘big lie’ was really being told now, isn’t it? 

Look at what the NWC told voters during the referendum – which was a time where many people who felt uneasy about abortion were bombarded with media message telling them they had to vote Yes. 

Welcoming the draft legislation – providing for abortion to 12 weeks – the NWC said it was “the type of controlled change that people in Ireland will be looking for as part of the upcoming referendum.” 

The proposed abortion regime “includes a restricted period in early pregnancy, where a woman who needs an abortion can access care, strictly within the first 12 weeks, in the appropriate medical setting, and in close consultation with her doctor,” they continued.

“Permitted reasons for later-stage abortions are strictly limited, and only considered for the purpose of protecting a woman’s mental or physical health or after the diagnosis of a fatal foetal condition.”

Note the repeated use of words like “strictly”, “restricted”, “controlled” – all used to convince voters that, as Leo Varadkar said, abortion would be “rare”, and, of course, that there was no question of late-term abortion on demand. 

Yet at the first available opportunity, here they are out demanding that late-term abortion be made legal for any reason at all. There’s no pity or empathy or compassion for the baby  – now fully formed for months, with visible movements: as long as a 12 inches at 6 months with fingerprints and hair – expressed. 

And, of course, there’s no recognition of the gruesome reality of what aborting a baby at that age really entails. No flinching at the thought of those broken little bodies, a devastating, heartbreaking testament to a terrible failure to provide genuine support to women and their babies. 

It’s horrific, and it should horrify you. But the NWC and their many taxpayer-funded sidekicks also want to increase the already sky-high number of abortions that take place. That’s not how they phrase it of course, instead they say they want to get rid of the three day period of reflection that must take place before the visit to a GP and taking abortion pills. 

But that three day wait gives women time to think – and without it abortion rates would be even higher. Many Yes voters have been shocked by the immediate and dramatic rise in the number of abortions: from less than 3,000 women travelling, with perhaps another taking abortion pills,  to 6,666 abortions in 2019, with another 6,577 in 2020. 

According to figures released to Carol Nolan TD, almost 1,000 women did not undergo an abortion after a first consultation with an abortion provider in 2019, indicating that the three-day waiting period is a positive measure to reduce the number of abortions. Similarly, almost 20% of women seeking abortion changed their mind in the three-day wait in 2020. 

Yet, the NWC and their many supporters in Dáil Éireann want to scrap that 3-day wait. Why would anyone with want even more abortions to take place? It makes no sense. 

Yet the government has long decided that the NWC – despite being unelected and obtaining almost all their funds from us long-suffering taxpayers – represent all the women in Ireland. So they decided that only the NWC, for example, would decide who the Abortion Review could hear from in relation to the operation of the abortion act. It sounds like a golden circle because it is one. 

If you voted Yes because you believed the spin and the promises in the 2018 referendum, you have a right to be angry. Your vote is now being used to push for abortion on demand to 6 months – and to abolish the requirement for time for thought that might help bring down the abortion rate.

But as well as being angry, you have a right to be heard. TDs need to hear from voters on these cruel, heartless, utterly inhumane proposals.  Don’t let them fool you twice.  

        

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This piece was first published on Gript.