Ireland has announced it will hold a referendum on legalizing abortion next summer, just weeks before a planned visit by Pope Francis.
Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, confirmed Tuesday that the national ballot would be held in May or June 2018. Pro-life campaigners have complained that the administration is showing poor timing since the referendum would fall just before the visit of the Pope, who is scheduled to attend the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August 2018.
Pro-abortion forces have been carrying out a full-court press on Ireland because of its restrictive abortion laws. DCLeaks.com revealed last year that billionaire George Soros has been using his Open Society Foundation (OSF) to turn Ireland into a pro-abortion country. Soros reportedly intends to use Ireland as a prototype to overturn anti-abortion laws in Catholic countries around the world.
The United Nations has also attacked Ireland for its pro-life laws, demanding that the predominantly Catholic nation repeal the Eighth Amendment to its constitution that bans the procedure. For years, the UN has targeted the Emerald Isle for its unwillingness to allow women to abort their babies, except when the mother’s life is in danger.
A UN committee in 2014 went so far as to claim that the Irish constitution violates international law, and in 2016, a ruling from UN human rights “experts” said that Ireland’s abortion ban “subjects women to discriminatory, cruel and degrading treatment.”
Mr Varadkar, Ireland’s first openly gay Irish Prime Minister, has described the eighth amendment as “too restrictive” and has also said that it was having a “chilling effect” on doctors.
During a three-day meeting in August between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Leo Varadkar, the two leaders reportedly spoke about Mr. Varadkar’s intention to hold a referendum next year aimed at repealing the Eighth Amendment.
In his visit to Canada, Varadkar told journalists that the two leaders had discussed the abortion issue for Ireland, as well as his plans for the referendum, which would “give the people of Ireland the opportunity to remove our constitutional ban on abortion, should they wish to do so.”
Earlier this summer, Ireland’s annual “Rally for Life” in Dublin drew some 70,000 marchers, who called for the protection of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
David Quinn, founder and director of the Iona Institute for Religion and Society, told Breitbart News that the immense turnout for the march sent “a very strong signal to the Government that they are going to meet tremendous resistance in their campaign to remove from our Constitution the right to life of the unborn.”
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