DUBLIN: At least 10,000 people rallied in Dublin on Saturday against Irish government plans to ease some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws, with some activists saying opinion polls were failing to fully reflect anti-abortion sentiment.
Voters will be asked as soon as May if they wish to repeal the eighth amendment to Ireland’s constitution — inserted in 1983 to enshrine the equal right to life of the mother and her unborn child — and instead enable parliament to set the laws.
The government has said it will begin drafting legislation in line with the recommendations made by an all-party parliamentary committee for terminations with no restrictions to be allowed up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy.
In the largest protest of the campaign so far, a march over one kilometer long snaked across the capital, with protesters chanting “pro-life” and “Repeal kills” and a few holding up pictures of aborted fetuses. Irish state broadcaster RTE estimated that tens of thousands took part.
“If the eighth amendment is repealed it will destroy Ireland,” said John O’Leary, an unemployed 50-year-old holding a banner of Saint Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint.
Abortion has long been a divisive issue in once stridently Catholic Ireland where a complete ban was lifted only in 2013 when terminations were allowed in cases where the mother’s life was in danger.
Two opinion polls in January found that over 50 percent of voters would support a proposal to allow abortion up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy, with just under 30 percent opposed and the rest undecided.
However, the polls showed a sharp generational divide with a clear majority of voters over 65 opposed.
“I am canvassing three times a week and people are pro-life, they are just afraid to say it,” said Deirdre Lawless, 32, a schoolteacher from the rural west of Ireland.
A number of activists complained of what they believed was a strong media bias in favor of loosening abortion laws. But they also said that the pro-choice movement may be overconfident.
“We will win because of the hubris of the other side,” said Gerry McGeough, 59, a member of the Catholic Irish nationalist group Ancient Order of Hibernians who traveled down with several busloads of activists from the Northern Ireland county of Tyrone. “Traditional Ireland has finally awoken,” he said.
Thousands rally against bid to loosen Irish abortion laws
Thousands rally against bid to loosen Irish abortion laws
Russia says foreign forces in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’
- Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries
MOSCOW: Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, citing Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The ministry’s comment, one of many it said were in response to questions put to Lavrov, also praised US President Donald Trump’s efforts at working for a resolution of the war and said he understood the fundamental reasons behind the conflict.
“The deployment of military units, facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure of Western countries in Ukraine is unacceptable to us and will be regarded as foreign intervention posing a direct threat to Russia’s security,” the ministry said on its website.
It said Western countries — which have discussed a possible deployment to Ukraine to help secure any peace deal — had to understand “that all foreign military contingents, including German ones, if deployed in Ukraine, will become legitimate targets for the Russian Armed Forces.”
The United States has spearheaded efforts to hold talks aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine and a second three-sided meeting with Russian and Ukrainian representatives is to take place this week in the United Arab Emirates.
The issue of ceding internationally recognized Ukrainian territory to Russia remains a major stumbling block. Kyiv rejects Russian calls for it to give up all of its Donbas region, including territory Moscow’s forces have not captured.
Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries.
The ministry said Moscow valued the “purposeful efforts” of the Trump administration in working toward a resolution and understanding Russia’s long-running concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and its overtures to Ukraine.
It described Trump as “one of the few Western politicians who not only immediately refused to advance meaningless and destructive preconditions for starting a substantive dialogue with Moscow on the Ukrainian crisis, but also publicly spoke about its root causes.”
