Ireland's Eighth Amendment bans abortions with subsequent amendments/acts allowing them in very strict circumstances. Another amendment allows Irish women to get legal abortions out of the country (this was previously illegal). All these amenents, including the 8th, have come since 1983.
Next Friday, there is a referendum on appealing the 8th. It's a big bellwether for Irish politics.
After independence, Ireland retained many UK laws, one of which was the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 which criminalised abortion.
However, in the early 1980s, following legal cases in other jurisdictions allowing the introduction of less restrictive abortion laws, some people became concerned that something similar could happen in Ireland.
In 1983, after a referendum, an eighth amendment was added to the country's constitution known as Article 40.3.3.
In it, the state acknowledged "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, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right".
" Hey OP, listen to my advice alright." -Tha General "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer." -Stigler's Law of Eponymy, discovered by Robert K. Merton MYT
(Yes, this is a form of escapism from the current morass in the US)
" Hey OP, listen to my advice alright." -Tha General "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer." -Stigler's Law of Eponymy, discovered by Robert K. Merton MYT
Three years ago this month, the Republic voted in favour of same-sex marriage – and became the first country in the world to do so by popular vote. A year later, Leo Varadkar, who was a number of firsts rolled into one, became taoiseach. At 38, he was the country’s youngest ever prime minister, the first from an ethnic minority background and the first to have come out as gay. ... This is the sixth referendum on the subject in the past 35 years. But while previous votes were about small, esoteric changes to the existing law, this time the Irish people will decide whether to liberalise, once and for all, one of the most restrictive abortion regimes in the world, or to keep the status quo.
Ireland has voted by a landslide margin to change the constitution so that abortion can be legalised, according to an exit poll conducted for The Irish Times by Ipsos/MRBI.
The poll suggests that the margin of victory for the Yes side in the referendum will be 68 per cent to 32 per cent – a stunning victory for the Yes side after a long and often divisive campaign.
More than 4,500 voters were interviewed by Ipsos/MRBI as they left polling stations on Friday. Sampling began at 7am and was conducted at 160 locations across every constituency throughout the day. The margin of error is estimated at +/- 1.5 per cent.
Counting of votes begins on Saturday morning at 9am with an official result expected to be declared in the afternoon.
...
Even Connacht-Ulster, expected to be the bulwark of the anti-repeal vote, voted in favour of the constitutional change by 59 per cent to 41 per cent, the poll finds.
Makes you wonder if the Irish miss the good ol' days when they were fighting all the time? Maybe all that tech talent they imported is behind this, hope they don't get the shooting and bombing started again.
The Eighth Amendment which effectively banned abortion in the Republic of Ireland has been formally repealed.
Irish President Michael D Higgins signed the abortion referendum bill into law on Tuesday.
In May, the country voted overwhelmingly to overturn the abortion ban by 66.4% to 33.6%. - a landslide win for the repeal side.
...
With the repeal of the Eighth, the Irish government's recommendation is that women will be able to access a termination within the first 12 weeks of their pregnancy.
em2nought wrote:Makes you wonder if the Irish miss the good ol' days when they were fighting all the time? Maybe all that tech talent they imported is behind this, hope they don't get the shooting and bombing started again.
Shitty effort. I wonder sometimes if you have a Junior after your last name.