The Sinn Fein Ard Fheis will be moved from November to June in order to amend the party policy around abortion rights to back the recommendation of the Joint Oireachtas Committee. The Sinn Fein President, Mary Loy McDonald said; “Today I put two proposals to the the Ard Chomhairle. The first was to move the party’s 2018 Ard Fheis from November to June. The second was a motion to go to that Ard Fheis, which would amend party policy in line with …
Lucy Williams writes about the current abortion rights debate I remember my mother wearing them when my youngest brother was born. When I asked her about them, she told me they were just to remember how tiny her babies had been in her belly. But, I imagine, she just didn’t want to explain the details to a seven-year-old. Then in secondary school, they appeared on school blazers- the gold glinting among the house pins, prefect badges and boyband stickers. These …
The Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment is set to recommend a straight repeal of Article 40.3.3 when it considers its final report on Wednesday. The Committee has 21 members and 12 are already on the record as saying that the removal of the clause should be recommended by the group. There might also be a majority in favour of recommending that abortion be freely available and without restriction for up to 12 weeks gestation. According to the Sunday TImes …
Responding to questioning from journalist Amanda Ferguson yesterday Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has confirmed that he supports women’s right to choose. Sinn Féin’s Vice-President Mary-Lou McDonald has also made it clear that whilst she respects her party’s current policy (Repeal the Eighth Amendment & enact legislation on the grounds of rape, incest, and fatal foetal abnormality) her personal position is very clear : “My politics and my view is decidedly pro-choice” Their colleague in the Dáil Meath TD Peadar Toibin …
Over the past weekend the Citizens’ Assembly in Ireland finished hearing testimony and voted on the issue of abortion. The results were surprisingly and emphatically pro-choice, and they represent a resounding success for this experiment with deliberative democracy. Democracy was meant to be deliberative. The idea was that citizens, motivated not by selfish or sectarian drives but by civic duty, would discuss the issues facing their society with a view to arriving at the best possible outcome for everybody. …
My Body My Rights is one of Amnesty’s world wide campaigns. Their European focus [and online petition] is the repeal of Ireland’s Eighth Amendment which equates the right to life of a pregnant woman with that of an embryo or foetus and is the foundation of the ban on abortion. The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, …
