Ireland

 

UN Committee Demands Ireland Change Constitution to Allow Wider Abortion

By Family & Life
Editor’s note. F&L is an Irish pro-life organization

Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny

The UN Human Rights Committee has demanded that Ireland change its Constitution in order explicitly to allow abortion in a wide range of circumstances. In an unsurprising development, the Committee’s Concluding Observations on the 4th Periodic Report of Ireland reiterated its “concern regarding the highly restrictive circumstances under which women can lawfully have an abortion in [Ireland] owing to article 40.3.3 of the Constitution”. But the Committee went on to command Ireland to “[r]evise its legislation on abortion, including its Constitution, to provide for additional exceptions in cases of rape, incest, serious risks to the health of the mother, or fatal foetal abnormality.”

Despite the fact that Ireland’s abortion law, which Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Enda Kenny rammed through the Dáil [Parliament] last year amid great controversy and ignoring massive public protests, already allows abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy if two like-minded psychiatrists sign off on it, that is not enough for the pro-abortion zealots on the UN Human Rights Committee.
When the examination of Ireland took place last week, Family & Life reminded the Committee that there is no such thing as a right to abortion in the Convention (the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights) or in international human rights law generally. It warned the Committee that it was seriously overstepping its mandate if it attempted to declare such a right to exist. The contemptuous attitude of Committee chairman Sir Nigel Rodley to the idea that anyone would challenge the pro-abortion ideology to which he so clearly subscribes was such that today’s observations should come as no surprise to anyone.

The Irish Constitution, by the way, can only be amended by a vote of the Irish people.

Source: NRLC News