UN Human Rights Council Plans to Target Ireland for Protecting Unborn Children From Abortion

Pro-life supporters in Ireland are not surprised at reports that the United Nations plans to facilitate further attacks on the country’s constitutional pro-life laws when the Human Rights Council meets in Geneva next week as part of its Universal Periodic Review into the human rights records of Member States.

It is becoming something of a morbid joke that the UN takes every opportunity it can to target the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution which recognizes the rights and dignity of every human alive in Ireland, including women and unborn babies. Incredibly, the UN allows other countries to question Ireland on this law but it overlooks the many abuses caused by abortion.

Readers of LifeNews will be well acquainted with these abuses – situations like babies born alive after failed abortions and left to die, the trauma and suffering of women who deeply regret their abortions, and the serious physical side-effects that abortion can cause.  While these are side-stepped by the UN, they are very much to the fore of pro-life campaigners in Ireland who are trying to keep abortion out of the country.

National newspapers in Ireland are reporting that 6 countries have submitted questions about Ireland’s abortion laws in an attempt to force the Irish Government to “bring the law into line with international human rights standards”.  For this, we can read “further liberalise Ireland’s abortion laws and pretend abortion is a human right.”

There is of course no such thing as a “human right” to an abortion.  Such a notion would be obscene because abortion contravenes the most basic human right of all – the right to life.  This does not stop lobby groups and governments acting from a pro-abortion stance from using the platform provided by the UN to force Ireland to concede.

And so, we are told, Sweden intends to ask what the Irish Government is prepared to do “to bring its legislation and medical practices in line at least with minimum international standards of sexual and reproductive health and rights and to allow abortion in the most serious cases such as rape, incest, fatal foetal abnormality and serious risks to the health of the mother.”

In other words, Sweden wants to know when the Irish Government will introduce wide-ranging abortion to birth even though the language used in its question tries to disguise this fact.

The Netherlands will asked what the Government will to about “the restrictive abortion regime in Irish law.”

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It is clearly ignored the 2013 Act which introduced abortion for the full nine months of pregnancy where there is a threat of suicide even though there is no medical evidence to show that abortion treats suicide ideation but it can have a negative effect on a woman’s mental health.  Hardly a “restrictive abortion regime”.

And Germany wants to know whether the Government will review the 8th Amendment “in which the biological existence of a foetus is put on an equal basis with the right to life of a pregnant woman.”

This is an incorrect assessment of the 8th Amendment.  The two human beings involved in pregnancy – mother and child – are given equal rights under the law but doctors care for both.  They don’t pit one against the other in the manner Germany’s question suggests.  But of course, the use of the word “foetus” is an attempt in itself to de-humanise the unborn child and try to airbrush him or her out of the equation – in other words, a standard tactic by those who try to introduce abortion the world over.

It’s not good enough that constitutional provisions put in place by the Irish People and intended to serve and protect the citizens of this country should be targeted in this way.  We expect the UN to act as a protector of human lives, not to provide a platform for countries who have a lesser standard of care than Ireland when it comes to caring for the most vulnerable, voiceless among us.

The 8th Amendment is responsible for saving the lives of thousands of people in Ireland – people who would otherwise have been aborted if the same kind of liberal abortion regime was in place in this country as in other States.  This is something to be thankful for.  It’s something to be celebrated.  And it’s certainly not something which should draw the attention of the United Nations on a regular basis in such a negative way.