The Pro Life Campaign has said it is confident polls showing support for abortion would change quickly in the event of any referendum “as people begin to reflect on what the changes would mean in practice and how it would open the door to widespread abortion.”
The PLC was responding to today’s poll in the Irish Times indicating that 72% of the public support abortion on ‘mental health’ grounds, among other findings. The poll also shows that only 23% are in favour of abortion on request, in stark contrast to the Citizens’ Assembly, where two thirds of its members supported abortion on request for any reason.
Commenting on today’s poll results, PLC spokesperson Cora Sherlock said:
“Abortion on ‘health’ and ‘mental health’ grounds has led to 200,000 abortions a year in Britain.
“The main players pushing for change to the law here make no secret of their personal support for abortion on request without restrictions. They fully get it however that the public is not on board for such radical change, so of course they’ll try to come forward with a proposal that has the appearance of being restrictive but will be nothing of the sort. That’s what happened in pretty much every country that introduced wide-ranging abortion and I’ve no doubt the exact same ploy will be attempted here.
She continued: “Taking a closer look, there are some real positives in today’s poll for the pro-life side.
“I would be confident when people reflect on what dismantling the Eighth Amendment would actually lead to in practice, support for retaining it will grow quickly. The clear lesson from the Citizens’ Assembly is that once you start singling out certain unborn babies as unworthy of legal protection, then in effect you are saying that unborn human life in general has no intrinsic value.”
“As a society, we either protect all human life or you end up protecting none. It’s that stark,” she concluded.