‘Repealing the Eighth will lead to slippery slope,’ Pro-Life event told
A BRITISH politician has urged the Irish people to “think deeply” before they repeal the Eighth Amendment because it could set Ireland on the “slippery slope” to eugenic abortions and gendercide.
Baron David Alton of Liverpool was one of the keynote speakers at the Pro-Life Campaign’s annual conference at the RDS in Dublin yesterday.
Speaking to the Irish Independent, the former Liberal Democrat MP, said the Eighth Amendment had “safeguarded life”.
“Once you start carrying out abortion in Ireland, it will be a slippery slope that takes you down the quagmire we have in the UK, where one abortion now takes place every three minutes,” he said.
Expressing concern over eugenic abortion, he said in the UK a baby with a disability can be aborted up to and including at birth and that baby girls had been aborted purely because of their gender.
He also warned that a more liberal abortion regime would lead to the subversion of conscience and free speech for health workers, and highlighted the case of two Scottish midwives who lost their jobs because they refused to perform abortions.
“Some 98pc of all abortions in the UK have nothing whatsoever to do with the so-called hard cases,” he said, adding that when MPs voted for the 1967 Abortion Act, most believed it would only ever be used in the most extreme circumstances.
“We have an abortion industry that in the last 10 years has generated a total of £750m (€849m) – this is big business and they are not interested in the welfare of women in tragic circumstances.”
The British politician expressed his solidarity to the 1,000 conference delegates with former UCD students union president Katie Ascough, who was impeached for removing abortion information from a student handbook.
To applause, he said: “I think it is outrageous that someone should be hounded out of elected office in a university for expressing the kind of views that she has. I don’t think UCD deserved to have her as its president and maybe one day she will be president of something else.”
In cases of fatal foetal abnormality, he said he rejected the idea that the solution in such cases is “to add to the parents’ grief by aborting the baby”.
“There are alternatives for people who find themselves in these very tragic circumstances. I am a patron of the Life Organisation which has two hospices called Zoe’s Place, which are there to help people who find themselves in that situation.”
He criticised the Oireachtas Committee on abortion as “blatantly biased” and said if the Government was really serious about examining best practice it wouldn’t just invite members of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service or those providing abortions, but would look at all the alternatives that are on offer.
Disability
Another speaker, Liz McDermott of the group One Day More, spoke about her presentation to the Oireachtas Committee when she talked about the experience of being pregnant in Ireland with a child with a serious disability.
“In the case of children who are diagnosed with disabilities in the womb, abortion becomes a very obvious form of discrimination. The Eighth Amendment acts as a vital protection for those children,” she said.
Another speaker, Abby Johnson, was formerly a director of an abortion clinic in the US run by Planned Parenthood. She left it after becoming disillusioned by what she witnessed. The mother of seven said “abortion can never be safe” and urged delegates to “fight” to keep the Eighth Amendment.