Voters will be asked if they want to repeal article 40.3.3 – known as the eighth amendment – which gives unborn foetuses and pregnant women an equal right to life. (AP photo/File)
On May 25, people of Ireland are all set to vote on whether to relax the country’s strict abortion laws. Voters will be asked if they want to repeal article 40.3.3 – known as the eighth amendment – which gives unborn foetuses and pregnant women an equal right to life, in effect enshrining a ban on abortion in Ireland’s constitution and making it the sole western democracy to do so. Abortions have been allowed in cases where the mother’s life is in danger since 2013 and currently the penalty for accessing an illegal abortion is up to 14 years in prison.
Friday’s referendum could give Irish women the right to end their pregnancies for the first time. Debate is raging everywhere — homes and pubs, on leaflets and lampposts– in Ireland over whether to lift the country’s decades-old ban on abortion. While the pro-repeal banners say “Her choice: vote yes”, the anti-abortions placards warn against a “license to kill.”
The campaign is going on in Ireland since long but it took a twist earlier this month when Facebook and Google moved to restrict or remove advertisemnets relating to the abortion vote. It is the latest response to global concern about social media’s role in influencing political campaigns, from the US presidential race to Brexit. “We shouldn’t be naive in thinking Ireland would be immune from all these worldwide trends. Because of the complete lack of any regulation on social media campaigning in Ireland, somebody at the moment can throw any amount of money, from anywhere in the world, with any message and there’s nothing anybody can do about it,” AP quoted lawmaker James Lawless, technology spokesman for the opposition Fianna Fail party, as saying.
Voters are being asked whether they want to keep or repeal the eighth amendment to Ireland’s constitution, added in 1983, which commits authorities to defend equally the right to life of a mother and an unborn child. Abortion is legal only in rare cases when the woman’s life is in danger, and several thousand Irish women travel each year to terminate pregnancies in neighboring Britain.
(With inputs from AP)