Pro-Life Campaign rebukes UN on liberalizing Irish abortion laws

The Irish Pro-Life Campaign is pushing back against pressure from the United Nations to relax the country’s pro-life laws, RTE News reports.

On Monday, the UN’s Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights called on Ireland to hold a referendum to repeal its constitutional guarantee of preborn humans’ equal right to life and to revise its 2013 Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act.

Ireland’s “highly restrictive legislation on abortion,” the committee claimed, imposes a “discriminatory impact on women who cannot afford to get abortion abroad.”

But in response, Pro-Life Campaign Deputy Chair Cora Sherlock told RTE’s morning Ireland that it was inappropriate for the UN to lecture Ireland on its abortion laws, saying that while debate is always welcome, a new referendum is unnecessary.

In particular, she argued the UN committee “made a fundamental error” in its analysis of the 2013 act: “That is an act which let’s remember allows abortion for the full nine months of pregnancy where there is threat of suicide and that’s not based on any medical evidence.”