Why KEEP the 8th Amendment?

Abortion campaigners, funded by millions of euros from abroad, are calling for the 8th Amendment to be repealed – but the 8th protects the right to life of both mother and baby.

But banning abortion has been a positive experience for Irish society. It has saved many lives, and led to improved supports for women in crisis. Here’s the facts:

  1. In the past 13 years the number of Irish women seeking an abortion in Britain has fallen dramatically – by almost 45%. The numbers are down from 6,700 women travelling in 2001 to 3,735 in 2014. This is real progress – offering women real support and a better answer than abortion. (It’s ironic that Labour, who have an aggressively pro-abortion policy, are also inflicting savage cuts on payments to single parents).
  1. This means we have a low abortion rate compared to other EU countries. Our abortion rate is 5% – ie 5% of all pregnancies end in abortion. In Britain, more than 20% of all pregnancies end in abortion according to figures from the British Department of Health.
  1. Across Europe the figures are pretty similar:
  • The official figures tell us that in Spain, one in five unborn babies also lost their lives to abortion in 2011, giving that country a similarly shocking abortion rate of 20%.
  • In Italy it is 17%,
  • in Sweden it is 24% – and 41% of all abortions in that country in 2011 were repeat abortions.
  • In the Netherlands, the rate is 14% and rising.

 

2600 x 400 250,000

The 8th Amendment has saved 250,000 lives

By comparing British and Irish abortion rates, we can estimate that, since 1983, the lives of at least 250,000 Irish babies were saved from abortion because of the 8th amendment, and our ban on abortion. That’s 1 in every 20 people. A child in every class. The person sitting next to you in work. Maybe it’s you.

250,000 babies were not aborted since 1983 because our pro-life laws did exactly what was said on the tin – they saved lives. Because abortion wasn’t easily accessible, and we built a culture of protecting mothers and babies our abortion rate stayed low – in contrast to what it would have been if abortion was legal.

So an estimated 250,000 people owe their lives to the 8th Amendment – and to the courage of their mothers. (See below for the data behind this figure)

That’s enough people to fill Croke Park twice over. It’s more people than live in the city of Cork. That’s a child in every class, a person in every football team, someone with you in school, in college, in your running club, at work, paying taxes, part of society contributing to society. And it’s 250,000 women who will never have to regret having an abortion. No woman regrets giving life to her child.

Women say that better supports and better awareness led them to choose life for their child. Ironically, the Labour Party, which is one of the loudest voices for abortion in Ireland have stood over savage cuts to assistance to single parents.

Check the numbers

By taking the number of Irish pregnancies each year since 1984 and applying the British abortion rate – the rate we are also likely to have seen here if abortion was legal – we can estimate the number of babies that would have been aborted if abortion had been legal in Ireland. That came to an estimate of 418,242

We then contrasted that with the ACTUAL number of abortions on women travelling from Ireland according to British abortion clinics in that period: 147,723.

Allowing for the fact that a number of women may have travelled to countries for an abortion, that’s still a conservative estimate of 250,000 people who are alive today because of the 8th amendment.

Child page Image 1400 x 500 250,000 reasons to keep