Irish pro-abortion movement loses momentum after city vote

The City and County Council of Limerick, Ireland, on Monday rejected a proposal calling for a referendum to repeal the country’s constitutional right-to-life provision. The 23-12 vote slows an effort led by the Anti-Austerity Alliance and other pro-abortion groups to gather support for a referendum on Ireland’s Eighth Amendment.

Limerick County is the eighth most populous county in the Republic of Ireland.

The vote follows a renewed outcry for abortion rights in the conservative country. In September 2014, the Cork City Council narrowly passed a resolution—the first of its kind in Ireland—supporting a referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment. And last week, 10,000 pro-abortion demonstrators marched in Dublin, calling for greater access to abortion. After two postponements, the Dublin City Council is planning an October vote on the referendum call.

The votes are not legally binding but are intended to build consensus toward legalizing abortion.

The Limerick Council’s nearly 2-1 pro-life majority reflects the same portion of Irish voters, who in 1983 with a 67 percent majority, approved adding the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution. The amendment acknowledges the “right to life of the unborn” as being “equal [to the] right to life of the mother.”

A July poll in The Sunday Times found little had changed: Only one-third of Irish voters support making abortion as readily available as it is in Britain. Seventy percent said abortion should be reserved for cases of rape, incest, or fetal abnormality.

In response to the media- and celebrity-fanned move toward “choice,” Eddie Ryan, a lawmaker from the conservative Fianna Fáil party, asked the Limerick Council prior to the vote, “What choice has the unborn child?”

Irish law does not forbid women seeking abortion to leave the country. In 2001, more than 6,600 women traveled from Ireland to England and Wales to obtain abortions, but the annual numbers have decreased steadily since then to about 3,700 in 2014, roughly the same number as in 1983.

Andorra, Malta, and San Marino (total population of approximately 535,000) are the only European countries—apart from Ireland—that do not permit abortion even in cases of rape, incest, and fetal abnormality.

In January 2014, Ireland enacted the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, allowing abortion in cases of serious illness or substantial risk of maternal death or suicide. That year, 26 women obtained abortions in Irish hospitals, a number consistent with testimony given during government hearings on the annual number of abortions “necessary” to protect the mother’s life.