JOHN SMEATON, DIRECTOR OF SPUC: Irish women are under threat from Irish Labour leader's plan

Monday, 19 April 2010

Irish women are under threat from Irish Labour leader's plan

Mr Eamon Gilmore, the leader of the Irish Labour Party, has announced his commitment to a fundamental review of the Irish Constitution. One of his major motivations for doing so is to reverse the protection currently afforded to women and their unborn children in the Irish Constitution, by its prohibition of abortion. Mr Gilmore has said that

“[t]here is much about it [the Irish Constitution] that has served us well, but it is a document written in the 1930s for the 1930s”.

and in the 1930s

“women were considered to be second-class citizens”.

Whatever the merits or otherwise of Mr Gilmore's historical analysis, what a sad irony it is that his proposals include going much further than turning a category of Irish people into second-class citizens in 2010. If Mr Gilmore is successful, unborn Irish children will be robbed completely of citizenship, having their most fundamental right, the right to be born, cruelly taken away from them.

Why does Mr Gilmore think that it is appropriate to deprive women of their rights before they are born? Why does Mr Gilmore think that it is beneficial for women to do something that kills their children and harms them too?

It is highly misleading for Mr Gimore to attempt to mask a pro-abortion agenda behind the veil of equality for women. Abortion kills unborn females and harms pregnant mothers.

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About Me

I became involved in SPUC after graduating, when I established a branch in south London in 1974. I have worked full-time for SPUC for 42 years. I became chief executive of SPUC in the UK in 1996, having been general secretary since 1978. I was elected vice-president of International Right to Life Federation in 2005. At UN conferences in Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing, Istanbul and Rome, I helped coordinate more than 150 pro-life/pro-family groups resulting in pro-life victories in Cairo, Istanbul and Rome. I was educated at Salesian College, London, before going to Oxford where I graduated in English Language and Literature. I qualified as a teacher, becoming head of English at a secondary school. I am married to Josephine. We have a grown-up family and we live in north London.