Your Questions
We've been canvassing door to door to nearly 3 years. Here are the most common questions about abortion and their answers.
Q: Why SAVE the 8th Amendment?
A: The 8th protects the right to life of BOTH mother and baby.
No-one wants 10,000 more abortions every year
Without the 8th amendment, abortion will become legal – and abortion campaigners are looking for abortion on demand, right up to birth. That’s horrific.
We have a low abortion rate, especially compared to other EU countries. One in every 20 babies are aborted in Ireland, where women travel abroad. In Britain, and across Europe, the figure is much higher: one in every 5 babies are aborted before birth in Britain. Where abortion is legal, the number of abortion rises sharply. Is this what we want for Ireland?
If we had Britain’s abortion rate – one in every 5 babies aborted- we’d have an additional 10,000 abortions every year. Surely no reasonable person wants more abortions to take place
So instead of 3,500 abortions every year, we’d have 14,000 babies being killed before birth. We can do better for mothers and babies.
In fact, with the 8th, we have been doing better. In the past 13 years the number of Irish women seeking an abortion in Britain has fallen dramatically – by more than 50%. The numbers are down from 6,673 women travelling in 2001 to 3,265 in 2016. This is real progress – offering women real support and a better answer than abortion.
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Q: Are women’s lives protected without abortion?
A: Yes.
Abortion is not necessary to save a woman’s life. Women will always be treated if life-threatening condition arises in pregnancy, even if that means the life of the baby is lost. Treatment for conditions arising in pregnancy, such as pre-eclampsia or sepsis, are NOT abortions, even if the life of the baby is lost, as the intention is not to harm the baby.
Doctors say that no Irish woman has ever been denied life-saving medical treatments any condition arising in pregnancy because of our law on abortion. Abortion is not Good healthcare saves lives – the purpose of abortion is to end a life.
More than 1000 doctors have now signed the Dublin Declaration which states that abortion is not needed to save the life of a woman.
Q: A Foetus or a Baby?
A: Your life started nine months before you were born, and that’s the same for every child.
Fetus is just a latin term for little one – we were all once that tiny and vulnerable. Every unborn baby is a human being who deserve protection.
10 amazing facts that about your life before birth.
At the moment of conception, a new life is formed. There is no other point where we can say our life begins. 23 chromosomes from both parents combine to create a unique individual human being and everything about that new person is coded into their DNA from that first cell. “[The zygote], formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new human being.” (Keith L. Moore, Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2008. p. 2.)
The heart begins to beat 21 days after fertilisation.
At 3 weeks, all three primary sections of your brain are identifiable and brainwaves can be recorded at six weeks.
Arm buds develop by week 4, by week 6, fingers are starting to form and by week 10, fingernails are starting to form.
At 8 weeks the baby is fully formed and may be sucking her thumb.
Unborn babies show signs of left or right handedness as early as 8 weeks.
Fingerprints begin to emerge by week 10 and at this stage foot prints are already engraved in the baby’s skin.
By 8 weeks after fertilisation, the unborn child begins to react to touch.
At 20 weeks babies can recognise their mother’s voices.
Babies born as early as 21 weeks have survived. In Ireland, baby Sive McDonald was born at just 23 weeks in 2010, weighing less than a pound, and is now thriving.
Q: What about where the baby has a life limiting condition and is not expected to live for long after birth?
A: These are babies with a severe disability, who are alive and kicking in the womb, but who have been diagnosed with a condition which means they may not live for long after birth.
Parents say that the time they have with their baby, however short, brings love and joy, and is a pathway to healing. They have called for better services to be made available so that they have the support they need to pour a lifetime of love into the time they have with their child. SEE some of their beautiful and inspiring stories below.
These babies are not ‘incompatible with life’. No baby is. This label, and ugly and misleading phrases like ‘fatal, foetal abnormality’, are used to dehumanise these babies – and to justify ending their lives because of their disability. These phrases are NOT a medical diagnosis and misinform parents when they are vulnerable and fearful for their baby.
It is a medical fact that there is no condition, none whatsoever, where a doctor can say that a baby will not live beyond birth. In fact, most of these babies, even with the most severe disabilities such as anencephaly, do live beyond birth, and they are valuable and precious just like any child. They are #CompatibleWithLove.
Parents say that the negative language and misinformation used in Irish hospitals, as well as by abortion campaigners, can push parents towards abortion, and to a lifetime of regret. Recent research from Duke University found that women who undergo abortion after a diagnosis of anencephaly are significantly more likely to suffer depression and despair.
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Q: Are women hurt by abortion?
A: Yes. Abortion fails women who are in crisis. It does not address the needs of women who are hurt and scared or alone and unsure – and adds to their hurt by killing their child.
Abortion does not help women. In fact, research has repeatedly shown that women can be seriously hurt by the abortion procedure and many women regret it afterwards. Abortion can leave many long-lasting physical and mental scars that women must deal with for years.
A 2008 study conducted by Dr. David Fergusson and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that women who had abortions were 30% more likely to experience mental disorder. (1)
A 13-year-long study by Gissler et al published in the European Journal of Public Health in 2005, found that the suicide rate among women who had abortions was six times higher than that of women who had given birth and double the number of women who had had miscarriages. (2)
When Irish women are killed or maimed by abortion, the media largely ignores these horrific cases. Aisha Chithira, from Ireland, was 22 weeks pregnant when she bled to death after an abortion in a Marie Stopes clinic in West London, in January 2012. The abortionist and two nurses are currently being prosecuted in the British courts. (3)
Another Irish woman almost died in the same Marie Stopes clinic in 2006 when abortionist, Phanuel Dartey, perforated her uterus and left pieces of her baby inside her body. (4)
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Q: What about pregnancy after rape?
Rape is a shocking crime, and rape victims deserve the full and unfailing support of society. Where a rape victim becomes pregnant we are required to act with the greatest care and compassion.
This is an extremely difficult situation and we need to ask: is abortion the answer, or is it yet another traumatic violation? We also need to consider that while the rapist is a criminal, the baby is also an innocent party.
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Q: Abortion & Suicide
The medical evidence is clear: abortion does not help women who are suicidal – and in fact it can hurt them.
In a special 2013 hearing, all the medical experts agreed that abortion is NOT a treatment where a pregnant mother is in distress and is contemplating suicide.
They pointed out that the medical evidence shows that abortion is NOT a solution to suicidality, and some research shows that women are at greater risk of dying by suicide following abortion.
Instead, doctors showed, the correct response to suicidality is to provide proper psychological treatment and medication to women in crisis. Modern medicine can, and should, care for both mother and baby.
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Q: What about Crisis Pregnancy
No one denies that sometimes a pregnancy can cause a crisis for a woman, especially women who are vulnerable. We need to make sure that women receive the support they need and deserve.
As a compassionate society we should seek to terminate the CRISIS and not the CHILD.
Financial, medical, family, and relationship issues can place incredible strain on expectant mothers.
However, abortion is a medieval response to a crisis pregnancy. In the modern world, we should not have to offer violence as a solution to a woman in desperate need.
As a society, we can and should do better and offer progressive solutions that eliminate the crisis and not the pregnancy.
Women deserve better than abortion and society should be able to provide better answers to crisis pregnancies than abortion. In order to build a better, more compassionate society and culture, we should be able to love them both.
Unborn babies and their mothers must be constitutionally protected from the failed, harmful, and outdated solution of abortion.
The 8th Amendment saves 30 babies every day!
Did you know that 30 babies are saved from abortion every single day by our pro-life laws. That’s 30 good reasons – every day – to Save the 8th!
You see, we have a very low abortion rate in Ireland – just 5%. But if we had Britain’s shocking abortion rate of 20%, one in every 5 babies Irish babies would have their lives ended abortion.
In fact, if we had Britain’s abortion rate, we would have 14,000 abortions every year. That would be an INCREASE of 10,000 abortions per year – or 30 more babies killed by abortion EVERY day. That’s the reality of the #RepealThe8th slogan.
Abortion campaigners always ignore the fact that the number of Irish women travelling for abortion has fallen by 48% since 2001. Real compassion and better support helps both mother and baby.
Be proud to support a law that saves 30 women and babies from abortion every day. Let’s Save Lives and Save the 8th.
Don't follow failure of other countries
If we remove all constitutional protection for the unborn baby then we are wide open to any kind of abortion legislation – such as that introduced in Britain, our nearest neighbour.
The British Abortion Act was meant to be ‘restrictive’ legislation – with two doctors signing off on an abortion only available under certain circumstances. Now there are 200,000 abortions every year – 1 in every 5 babies are killed before birth. Even the architect of the law, Lord David Steele, said “I never envisaged there would be so many abortions”.
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