Abortion !!! Abortion !!!
Ireland is to hold a referendum on abortion in 2018, it has been announced.
A decision on the eighth amendment, which gives equal right to life to the unborn, will take place in May or June next year, according to Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s government.
The public will then decide if abortion should be legalised “in almost all cases”.
The move comes after a long fight by campaigners to “repeal the 8th”, which caught international attention. It also comes before the sixth annual March for Choice demonstrations in Dublin and London on Saturday.
Claire McGowran, a volunteer with London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, told The Independent that they were waiting for an exact date and the wording of the referendum question and were ready to start a year of campaigning.
"Our ideal is that the eighth amendment is completely repealed, and not replaced," she said. "The very minimum is that it's not confusing anymore and gives free, safe abortions to women in Ireland regardless of how they became pregnant."
The United Nations Human Rights Committee called last July for the country’s abortion bans to be reversed.
Abortion Rights Campaign wrote on its website to advertise the march on Saturday: “This year we have learned of young children sectioned under the Mental Health Act for seeking abortions, of suicidal women denied access to the abortion they’re entitled to under the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act because their doctor doesn’t think they’re ‘suicidal enough’.
“Meanwhile in Northern Ireland women continue to be prosecuted for procuring their own abortions, even though the push to decriminalise abortion is growing in the rest of the UK.
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