The Yes side of this referendum is big on euphemism: ‘reproductive rights’; the ‘right to choose’ (choose what?); and the most nauseating of all – ‘abortion care’.
At the heart of the exercise is an immense evasion: the baby. It is as if the baby is a kind of cancer, to be eliminated, chopped off, expunged.

Another word for ‘euphemism’ is ‘lie’. This is a referendum of lies. Not, as we are sometimes told, lies on both sides but lies on only one side: the side that seeks the slaughter of innocents but will not come right out and say so. We are enjoined to be polite, to keep the debate ‘respectful’, to avoid ‘shock tactics’, but these injunctions invariably come from the people who are engaged in the telling of these colossal lies. ‘Shock tactics’ means the truth. Keeping the debate ‘respectful’ means avoiding mention of the truth.

This referendum is about destroying under Irish law the right-to-life of a category of human being – the most innocent, defenceless, vulnerable and voiceless category of human being. When the euphemisms, evasions, and prevarications are stripped away – the lies, that is – this is what it comes down to.

The mechanism adopted by the Government for replacing the right-to-life of the unborn child in Article 40.3.3 of the Irish Constitution with a right to annihilate that child using lethal force is to remove that article and put in its place what looks like a kind of signpost: ‘Provision may be made in law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy’.

This, too, needs translation, for it mimics in style the approach of the Government and other elements of the Yes side – concealing by a sleight-of-hand what is really going to happen.
In fact, inserting the phrase ‘Provision may be made in law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy’ appears to be a nonsense in the immediate context in which it will appear in the Constitution should this amendment – God in Your mercy forbid – be passed.  Article 40 is the first of a series of five articles that are utterly different to the other article in the Constitution. The language of these articles is quite different also: they contain words that, by and large, do not appear elsewhere in the Constitution: ‘antecedent’, ‘inalienable’, ‘imprescriptible’, ‘natural’. These words mean, respectively, more or less: ‘pre-existing’, ‘incapable of being given up’, ‘incapable of being taken away’, ‘by virtue of a natural and given condition’. These words ought to alert us to something here that is neither minor nor usual.


Just above Article 40 is a heading: ‘Fundamental Rights’.  This refers to a category of rights that is distinct and discrete in the context of the dispensations laid down by Bunreacht na hÉireann: these are rights that do not derive from human lawmaking, and therefore cannot be annulled by court, parliament or ballot box. There is a good reason for this, best understood by reference to C.S. Lewis’s observation in The Abolition of Man that, when man abolishes God, we do not end up in a situation whereby all men (all humans) become gods, but invariably with only a few men coming to dominate over the many.  This is how tyranny develops, and it is why the most fundamental rights of man require to be constructed and set down in a manner that places them out of the reach of mere men. Hence this special section of the Irish Constitution, comprising Articles 40-44, which you might call the Out of Human Reach section of the Constitution.  The right-to-life of the unborn child is one of these most fundamental rights.

By a series of evasions engineered by judges, lawyers and politicians, we are coming very close to the total abolition of this principle whereby the most fundamental rights of each one of us (the right-to-life being the most fundamental of all) will be struck down in their present form and reinvented – by men – so that they will in the future be amenable to reinterpretation and dispensation by men – by judges, politicians and, to a limited extent, under ‘guidance’ from judges and politicians, by the electorate.

And the mechanism of this amendment is precisely in line with these tendencies and trends. For in striking down the right-to-life of the unborn child, and replacing this with a provision asserting that the Oireachtas (our lawmaking institution) will ‘regulate for the termination of pregnancy’, we will be supplanting the right-to-life with a right-to-kill. Not merely that, but this right-to-kill will, by virtue of being situated within Article 40 (the first of the fundamental rights articles) will immediately assert a new fundamental right: the right to terminate pregnancies, which being translated means the right to kill babies in the womb. If this happens, it will be the first time anywhere in the world that abortion will have been deemed a ‘fundamental human right’. Not even the United States, which has had abortion for 45 years and has used it to kill about 60 million of its own citizens, has reached the stage of making abortion a fundamental human right.

And, moreover, if we do this, we will become the first people in the world to vote down the rights of a type of human person in our midst.  Is that something we will feel proud to trumpet around the world?
In this era of euphemism, I want therefore to translate the question we are to be asked on May 25th. It is, in effect a two-part question, and this is its essence:
Are you, (a) prepared to strike down, to eliminate, to annul, void and remove the right-to-life of the most innocent and defenceless human beings in our midst – the unborn children in the wombs of their mothers – so that, (b) we, your Government and Parliament, may introduce lethal force to extinguish their lives and tell the world that that is what you wanted?

Friday, May 25th will be a momentous day in the annals of Irish history. In the past 1,000 years, we have had a long and bloody journey to where we have now fetched up, with many gory days, from the Battle of Clontarf to the bombing of Omagh. But, unless we awaken before that day from the sleep of euphemism that currently grips us, Friday, May 25th may emerge as the bloodiest day in all of our history.

In a shock to no one, the exit poll from RTÉ has it at 68% yes and 38% no. The conservative Ireland that nearly prohibited divorce and banned abortion is dead.

At some point, the Irish faith in the Church and her clergy collapsed and this is the result. The days of Catholicism having any influence over any country's government and laws are largely over.

Ireland voted for the legalization of abortion.  Ugh.

At least the U.S. had nine judges force it on us.  Those Irish, no longer Catholic, are now going to became Pelagius for secular modernism.