A group of Lawyers have argued that repeal of the Eighth Amendment would remove all constitutional protection from the unborn and clear the way for an expansive abortion regime. in a letter in yesterday’s Irish Examiner, the lawyers said he Supreme Court has clarified in the recent case, M v Minister for Justice, that the unborn have no constitutional rights apart from the Eighth Amendment. They said the Government is proposing an abortion regime that is comparable with that in Britain and is even more extensive than it during the first 12 weeks. With the Eighth Amendment repealed, they wrote, “it would be impossible to challenge successfully the constitutionality of this expansive abortion regime and it may prove very difficult to prevent a future Oireachtas from widening the grounds for abortion even beyond the current expansive proposal”.

Furthermore, they wrote: “The citing of hard cases is not relevant to the proposal in this upcoming referendum. We are not being asked to vote for abortion in certain limited cases, we are clearly being asked to remove all constitutional rights from unborn humans”. They concluded: “We all value our own life. To set at nought the value given to the lives of any cohort of humans is chilling. The enormity of the decision we are about to make as a people cannot be overstated”.