The business affairs correspondent for the Irish Times, Mark Paul, has lambasted Google for its decision to ban all 8th referendum ads calling it a terrifying “corporate intervention into Irish constitutional politics”.
“Does it not concern you,” he asked in a column in today’s newspaper, “that executives unknown, at a Californian-headquartered, New York-listed technology behemoth can take a sudden, seemingly arbitrary decision at the height of an Irish referendum campaign, potentially affecting the wording of Bunreacht na hÉireann? It terrifies me.”
He said the practical impact of Google’s decision “blatantly benefits one campaign side in a referendum at the expense of the other, is the very definition of foreign interference in our system.”
He said that the political editor of The Irish Times, Pat Leahy, had reported that Facebook and Google “became fearful in the past week that if the referendum was defeated, they would be the subject of an avalanche of blame” because No was more effectively using their platforms to target voters.
Addressing Yes campaigners directly, Mr Paul said: “Perhaps you do not care. You just want your side to win the vote and for the other shower to lose, and you’ll take any help you can get, even if it comes via a $754 billion, stock-market-listed US company. Brexiteers and Trump gained murky advantage through online. Revenge. The end justifies the means, you know? What will you do if, the next time a foreign corporate entity intervenes in a passionate Irish politic event, you are on the wrong side of the argument?”
All the main campaign groups to retain the Eighth Amendment united to issue a blanket condemnation of the decision by Google to ban all advertisements on the 8th referendum. The Pro Life Campaign, Save the Eighth group and the Iona Institute held a joint press conference yesterday where they said the move had nothing to do with preserving the integrity of the election, and everything to do with stopping the No side from winning. “It is very clear that the government, much of the establishment media, and corporate Ireland have determined that anything to secure a Yes vote must be done. In this case, it means preventing campaigns who have done nothing illegal from campaigning in a perfectly legal manner. This decision has been taken because one side in this referendum is afraid it is losing, and wants to prevent voters from being informed,” they said in a statement.
They said the campaign has been marked by attacks on every form of legitimate campaigning the NO side has taken part in, and a complete absence of scrutiny for the YES side. “Despite all of that, the polls have narrowed, and clearly there is fear in establishment Ireland that this referendum will be defeated. That explains the massive pressure exerted on Google, Facebook, and other platforms to deny advertising space to the NO campaign”. This, they said, was scandalous and “an attempt to rig the referendum”.
They concluded: “Online was the only platform available to the NO campaign to speak to voters directly. That platform is now being undermined in order to prevent the public from hearing the message of one side. This is completely unacceptable, and it brings the conduct of what had, heretofore, been a civil campaign into severe dispute”.
Earlier in the week, transparency campaigner, Gavin Sheridan, predicted the No side would win and would do so in part because of their large advantage in online advertising. He issued a clarion call to yes campaigners to increase their spending on those platforms massively to catch up. Instead, it seems, they simply applied pressure to the internet giants who very quickly buckled.
Five of Ireland’s most senior Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, including four former Chairmen of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, as well as the current Chairman of the HSE working group on maternal mortality, have said they are horrified by comments made by Drs Peter Boylan and Rhona Mahony in recent days.
In a letter provided to the Save the 8th campaign, Professor John Bonnar, Dr Eamon McGuinness, Dr James Clinch, Dr Conor Carr, and Dr Michael O’Hare call on Drs Boylan and O’Mahony to withdraw comments they made in a video for Together for Yes.
The letter states: “We are particularly appalled by the comments of Dr Rhona Mahony in the Together for Yes campaign video where she states ‘In Ireland today, we play medical roulette with women’s lives’, and those of Dr Peter Boylan in the same video where he claims the Eighth Amendment ‘makes it difficult for us to treat women with compassion and give them the proper care that they need’. These comments are simply not true and are nothing less than a serious misrepresentation of the Irish maternal health system. We call on them to withdraw these statements.”
The letter goes on to say that no doctor should be allowed to “use the 8th amendment as an excuse”.
Commenting on the letter, Save the 8th campaign chairwoman Niamh Ui Bhriain said: “This is a very significant intervention in the debate from five of Ireland’s most distinguished and senior obstetricians. They clearly rebut and reject the notion that Ireland is in any way unsafe for women, and they directly challenge some outrageous falsehoods told by those campaigning for a yes vote. When four former Chairmen of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists are saying that the 8th amendment does not impact maternal health, voters should sit up and listen”.
More than half of pregnant women in the country’s three main maternity hospitals who are told their babies will be born with Down Syndrome are opting for abortion. The women have availed of prenatal tests between 9 and 13 weeks into the pregnancy, at the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street, the Coombe Hospital and Rotunda Hospital.
The figures obtained by the Irish Independent come after the master of Holles Street, Dr Rhona Mahony, speaking on RTE Radio’s the News at One yesterday said half of women whose babies would be born with Down Syndrome chose not to continue with the pregnancy. “The screening test is 99pc predictive,” said Dr Mahony, referring to an initial screening test that can be applied at between nine and 12 weeks’ gestation. She added that about 1,000 women who attend Holles Street avail of it each year. “It looks like 50pc continue and not continue,” she said. If a screening test indicates a high probability of a condition such as Down’s or Edward’s syndrome, then a more invasive diagnostic test can be done to achieve 100% accuracy.
Speaking on Liveline subsequently, Dr Peter Boylan offered a clarification that it might take two weeks to receive the results of the screening test, and another three days to get the results of a diagnostic test, so it would be unlikely that a woman would receive a definitive diagnosis of downs before the 12 week unrestricted abortion cut off date in the Government’s proposed abortion legislation. However, he envisaged that medical screening could improve in the future and offer a result as early as seven weeks into a pregnancy. In that case, he said he would favour legislation to prevent abortion on the grounds of disability. Dr Boylan also said that the Government’s legislation would exclude disability as grounds for abortion after 12 weeks. However, this claim was disputed by numerous pro-life legal scholars who said no such exclusion is written into the heads of the bill published by Minister Simon Harris.
Google has revealed it is banning all ads related to the referendum on the Eighth Amendment from its platforms ahead of the vote on 25 May. Yesterday, Facebook announced it was to begin rejecting ads from foreign groups seeking to influence the referendum. However, Google has gone a step further than Facebook by not only rejecting ads from organisations and individuals from outside the State, but all relevant ads during the final weeks of the campaign.
“Following our update around election integrity efforts globally, we have decided to pause all ads related to the Irish referendum on the Eighth Amendment,” a Google spokesperson said. The move will take effect over the next 24 hours and last for the duration of the campaign across Google and YouTube.
Journalist and innovator Gavin Sheridan said on Monday that the No side was likely to win the referendum and pointed to the massive advantage of their online campaign over the Yes side. Various repeal campaigners, pro-choice politicians and some print media, including the Times, Ireland, applied pressure on the internet giants to change their policies. Once Google made their announcement, one of those, Senator Alice Mary Higgins, former policy coordinator National Women’s Council of Ireland, tweeted: “Google have agreed to place moratorium on referendum ads!!” The official TogetherForYes campaign tweeted their delight: “#together4yes welcomes the news that Google will ban #8thref ads.”
Archbishop Eamon Martin has welcomed comments by Pope Francis at his Regina Coeli address in Saint Peters’ Square, Rome, on Sunday 6 May in which the Pope spoke of the welcome that must always be afforded to the unborn.
Archbishop Martin said, “The words of Pope Francis over the weekend have a particular resonance with us as our country considers the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland. The Holy Father spoke about the Gospel teaching of Jesus to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ (Jn 15:12) and that this love must be part of our everyday lives as we are called to care for the elderly ‘as a precious treasure’; to provide ‘every assistance possible to those who are sick’, even when they are approaching the end of their lives; and to always welcome the unborn. This, Pope Francis said, is why ‘life must always be defended and loved, from conception to its natural end.’”
Archbishop Martin continued, “The comments of the Holy Father are very important in situating our teaching on the sacredness of unborn life within the context of our belief in the centrality of the commandment of love. Pope Francis said that the love of Christ is ‘not a superficial feeling’, but rather, ‘a fundamental attitude of the heart’. Our belief in this teaching of Jesus should inspire us to defend life from conception to its natural end.”
The General Secretary of the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association says the removal of faith-based admissions to schools is not necessary as the provision of extra schools has already addressed the problem of the shortage of school places.
Seamus Mulconry told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that the changes in the law agreed at a Cabinet meeting yesterday, to remove the so-called “baptism barrier” are redundant. “The issue is the lack of school places, not religion. Ninety-five per cent of schools are not over subscribed. The Minister announced he is building 16 new schools. He’s solving the problem, so I don’t know why there is a need for this.”
Mr Mulconry said that Catholic schools want to accept everyone who applies and they do so when there are sufficient places. “This is not a massive deal for us. Even schools that are oversubscribed take non-Catholic children under the sibling rule.”
“If Damien from ‘The Omen’ turned up, we’d take him in.”
The Save the 8th group has defended the practice of allowing pro-life lay speakers address Masses all over the country at the invitation of priests and bishops. It was responding to a statement from the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) which said the practice could be regarded by some Church-going Catholics as “inappropriate and insensitive” and “an abuse of the Eucharist”.
The ACP said that as a group “of men who are unmarried and without children of our own, we are not best placed to be in any way dogmatic on this issue”. Yet it decried the practice of laypeople with experience of marriage, or child-rearing, or expertise in medicine or law addressing congregations. And despite their disavowal of wisdom on the matter, they said they acccepted Church teaching that life is sacred but added that “human life is complex, throwing up situations that are more often grey than black and white and that demand from us a sensitive, non-judgemental, pastoral approach”.
A spokesperson for Savethe8th said the ACP “appears to be worried that Catholics may hear Catholic teaching reflected at Catholic Masses”.
“If we have reached the point where speaking about the right to life in a Christian church is in some way controversial, that would be a sign that hysteria has overtaken rational discourse in this referendum campaign.”
The Government is bracing itself for potential legal challenges for plans to remove the right of some denominational schools to give preference to members of their own faith in admissions to their own schools.
Minister for Education Richard Bruton is due to bring an amendment to school admissions legislation to Cabinet on Tuesday which would prohibit Catholic primary schools in particular, but not schools of other faiths or denominations, from giving enrolment priority to baptised children in cases where they are over-subscribed. While Mr Bruton announced the plans last year, the planned amendment has been subject to extensive legal advice from the Attorney General’s office.
The Irish Times reported earlier this year that Catholic bishops, trustee bodies for thousands of Catholic schools, along with management bodies and missionary groups, were preparing to fight the changes.
Leaders of the Baptist church in Ireland have released a statement urging their members to vote No to retain the Eighth Amendment. “It is our belief that a mark of a truly progressive society is in its commitment to protect its most vulnerable. Any move to eliminate that protection would be a regressive step for our society. The 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution recognises the worth of both women and unborn children. The 8th Amendment is a progressive measure that enshrines the equal right to life for all and helps make our society more meaningful, more compassionate and a model for other nations”, it said.
“We, therefore, urge our church members and our fellow citizens to resist this misguided call to repeal the 8th Amendment, and continue to work towards a better, more caring and compassionate society.”
