Ireland\u2019s voters will decide in late May on whether to lift a constitutional ban on most abortions, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Tuesday. Varadkar spoke after a special meeting of the Cabinet to agree on details of a referendum on the eighth amendment to Ireland\u2019s constitution.<\/p>\n
Varadkar says voters will be asked whether they want to retain the amendment, or repeal it and hand responsibility for legislating on abortion to parliament.<\/p>\n
The 1983 amendment commits authorities to defend equally the right to life of a mother and an unborn child, giving this largely Roman Catholic nation the strictest abortion restrictions in Europe. Abortion is legal only in rare cases when a woman\u2019s life is in danger. Several thousand Irish women travel each year for abortions in neighbouring Britain.<\/p>\n
Varadkar, who leads the center-right Fine Gael party, said he will campaign to ease the abortion ban. He said the government would prepare draft legislation allowing for unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. It will only be introduced in parliament if the eighth amendment is repealed.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor my part I will advocate a yes vote,\u201d said Varadkar, who has previously described himself as pro-life. \u201cMy own views have evolved over time. Life experience does that.\u201d Varadkar said he realised that \u201cthis will be a difficult decision for the Irish people to make.\u201d \u201cIt is a matter for people to make their own decision based on the evidence they hear, compassion and empathy and I want the debate to be respectful on all sides and it should never be personalised,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ireland\u2019s voters will decide in late May on whether to lift a constitutional ban on most abortions, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Tuesday. Varadkar spoke after a special meeting of the Cabinet to agree on details of a referendum on the eighth amendment to Ireland\u2019s constitution. Varadkar says voters will be asked whether they want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20306,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20304\/revisions\/20306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}