Colm Fitzpatrick
Finola Bruton with family. The wife of a former Taoiseach has urged voters to retain the Eighth Amendment in light of the “breath-taking” Government proposals which will put the lives of unborn babies in jeopardy.
Speaking at the Iona Institute on April 10, Finola Bruton said that repealing the constitutional provision will effectively introduce a liberal abortion regime into the country. “For the most part, this is an agenda-driven, ideologically-led, media- and youth-focused attempt to allow for the extinction of the lives of thousands and thousands of our most vulnerable human beings before they have allowed to be born,” she said.
Mrs Bruton added that the referendum is a challenge to all of society and that it requires everyone to examine their attitude towards the value of human life, noting that the current Government proposals are beyond all expectations and has disturbed many “middle-of-the-road citizens”.
“The breath-taking proposals that our legislators are envisioning, aided and abetted by the media, are at last stirring that still small voice of conscience in many who have up to now, been slumbering in a fog of moral ambivalence and misplaced, if well intentioned, compassion.”
She also pointed out that dialogue concerning the long-term consequences of a woman having an abortion herself has been left out of the referendum debate, despite the fact that the after-effects can be “traumatic”.
“The terrible guilt, the awful grief, the desperate if futile wish that all could be reversed. If only, they could go back. Yet, at every desperate mental and emotional turning, they are told that what they did was for the best. And more harshly, that it was their choice.”
Mrs Bruton concluded her speech by decrying the media’s focus on procedures and political fallout concerning the referendum, rather than dealing with what the debate is essentially about “a baby, a defenceless little girl or boy, a human being whose life we believe is worth more than a mere choice”, she said.