The Irish Catholic Bishops seem to have found their voice—and their nerve—in the lead-up to a national referendum that could repeal the constitutional amendment recognizing the rights of the unborn.
In a well-financed campaign, abortion supporters have set their sights on Ireland in their crusade to make the killing of the unborn a universal human “right.” But there are welcome signs that the Irish will not go down without a fight.
In early April, the former chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Ireland called out a “campaign of fear and misinformation” being waged by the pro-abortion lobby in the lead-up to the national referendum.
Two weeks later, three Catholic bishops released hard-hitting, simultaneous pastoral letters on April 15, urging Catholics and all people of good will to reject attempts to overturn the Eighth Amendment.
This Sunday, a fourth bishop weighed in, Denis Brennan of the Diocese of Ferns, with his own packed pastoral message on behalf of the unborn.
Repealing the Eighth Amendment “will strip the voiceless of their most fundamental right and make all talk of any other human rights irrelevant for them,” Bishop Brennan said.
Brennan noted some basic points of embryology—that an unborn child’s heart beats at 21 days and has all of his vital organs at twelve weeks.
“This twelve-week-old unborn baby—who is now enjoying for the first time the ability to kick, to move and to yawn—would, in the first stretches of young life, be without the basic protection of the right to life itself,” he said.
The Irish go to the polls on May 25 to vote on whether to retain or reject the Eighth Amendment, which protects unborn babies’ right to life.
“To concede to any person the right to intentionally take the life of another—in this case the life of a voiceless unborn child—is not only to redefine human life as less than sacred, it is also to make a hierarchy of human life— where some lives are deemed to be of no value at all,” the bishop said.
“In matters of life and death, none of us is a supreme judge who can decide the fate of another, least of all the vulnerable and the voiceless, the unborn child,” he continued. “None of us should ever have the power to decide on the death of another.”
The bishop’s comments followed on a fourth quarter press by Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, an openly gay politician who has been pushing for Ireland to become a pro-abortion country.
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