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Irish PM plans to move quickly on legal abortion

Published:Saturday | May 26, 2018 | 12:00 AM
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AP
People from the "Yes" campaign react as the first official results for Ireland's landmark referendum indicate a landslide win for abortion rights campaigners
AP
A woman places flowers by a mural showing Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian dentist who had sought and been denied an abortion before she died after a miscarriage in a Galway hospital, with the word YES over it, in Dublin, Ireland.
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DUBLIN (AP):

The prime minister of Ireland says that the passage of a referendum paving the way for legalised abortions is a historic day for his country and a great act of democracy.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, after official results showed more than two-thirds of voters backed repealing Ireland's constitutional abortion ban, that he wants to make sure there are fewer crisis pregnancies and better sex education in schools going forward.

Varadkar had supported the repeal and said that his government will move quickly to establish new legislation to govern legal abortions.

 

Once-in-a-generation vote

 

He said: "I said in recent days that this was a once-in-a-generation vote. Today, I believe we have voted for the next generation."

Varadkar added: "The wrenching pain of decades of mistreatment of Irish women cannot be unlived. However, today, we have ensured that it does not have to be lived again."

Elections officials said yesterday that more than 1.4 million voters favoured repealing the ban while roughly 724,000 wanted to keep it in place. More than 66 per cent of voters wanted an end to the ban.

The outcome was a historic victory for womens' rights in a traditionally Catholic country. The size of the win exceeded expectations and will make it much easier for Irish women to obtain abortions legally for the first time.

The vote removes a 1983 amendment that required Irish authorities to defend the lives of a woman and a foetus equally on almost all abortions.