Sizeable majority supports legal protection of unborn child

Comments by Dr Berry Kiely at the Pro Life Campaign Press Conference, 

Buswells Hotel, Dublin, 12.00pm, 16th February 2011

The latest research on abortion shows a sizeable majority of the public supports legal protection for the unborn child, while at the same time ensuring that women receive all necessary medical interventions in pregnancy.

The Pro Life Campaign commissioned Red C to carry out the survey on a quota controlled sample of 1,025 people aged 18+ between 8^th – 10^th February 2011.

Question 1 reads as follows:

Are you in favour of, or opposed to, constitutional protection for the unborn that prohibits abortion but allows the continuation of the existing practice of intervention to save a mother’s life in accordance with Irish medical ethics?

The finding shows that 68% support constitutional protection for the unborn, 26% oppose it and 5% don’t know or have no opinion. When the don’t knows/no opinions are excluded, 73% of the public support legal protection and 27% are opposed to it.

The Pro Life Campaign believes that the new poll findings confirm the existence of widespread public support for an approach to protecting the unborn child based on the important distinction between ensuring women receive all necessary medical treatments in pregnancy and prohibiting abortion, where the life of the baby is deliberately targeted.

The success of the Irish medical profession in providing the treatments women need in pregnancy without recourse to an abortion regime is confirmed yet again in the latest Report on Maternal Mortality [1] by the World Health Organisation which shows that Ireland, without legalised abortion, is the safest country for pregnant women, out of 172 countries.

Today’s poll finding comes in the wake of the European Court of Human Rights judgment in A, B & C -v- Ireland which led to calls from some politicians and abortion advocacy groups for abortion to be made available in Ireland. The judgement, however, does not require us to legislate for abortion but leaves it up to Ireland to decide its own laws on abortion.

Question 2 reads as follows:

In a recent Supreme Court decision, judges said that human embryos are not protected by the Constitution but deserve respect and their protection is a matter for the Government. Do you think the Government should legislate, or not, to protect human embryos in the area of stem cell research and assisted human reproduction?

The poll findings show that 62% support legal protection of the human embryo, 27% oppose it and 11% don’t know or have no opinion. When the don’t knows/no opinions are excluded, 69% of the public support legal protection and 31% are opposed to it.

This finding is also very reassuring. The fact that it is adult stem cell research, involving no destruction of human embryos, that is yielding all the breakthroughs we read about on an almost daily basis proves it is possible to work towards a win-win solution for both ethics and science in the area of stem cell research.

Before Election Day, the Pro Life Campaign calls on candidates and parties to state where they stand on the right to life of the unborn child and on legal protection for the human embryo. Voters are entitled to know where candidates and parties stand on these vitally important issues. How we treat the most vulnerable defines how committed we are as a society to an authentic vision of human rights.

Ends

[1] Report on Maternal Mortality by the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Bank (2007, 2010)

Abortion in Ireland - Pro Life Submissions far outnumber opposing side in public consultations

For a number of years now Government backed bodies have sought public submissions on life-related issues hoping to boost their claim that their recommendations are in line with public demand.     The public have responded in massive numbers, and encouragingly, the majority of submissions have been pro-life, with most people wanting human life in its most vulnerable stages protected by law, matching the findings of professional polls commissioned yearly by the Pro-Life Campaign.
However, it's been disturbing how often the recommendations of these bodies have gone the opposite way, raising the question how come the government who appoints most members of these bodies picks people unrepresentative of the majority view in the general public?

It points to a need for democratic oversight of such appointments to clarify why people with views differing sharply from the majority are appointed more often than those who share the commonly held pro-life views.

And in the run up to legislation in relation to frozen embryos the pattern has been repeated in the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction and the Irish Council for Bioethics.

For example, in the report of the Irish Council for Bioethics published in 2008, Council members were unanimous, 13 to 0, in recommending allowing that human embryos to be destroyed to extract stem cells for research, but 77% of the members of the public who responded to their question on this issue took the opposite view*

Another recent example of a preponderance of public submissions being pro-life now seems to have been the Medical Council’s advertising for public submissions in its preparations for the seventh edition of its Ethical Guide.  Recently, in preparing an article for the Irish Medical Times, Dara Gantly discovered that the Council received “more than 6,500 submissions from members of the public”, “the overwhelming majority” of which were pro-life. You can read this article which includes some analysis of the Pro Life Campaign’s submission here.

In the run up to the publication of government proposals following R v. R, it is politically significant that the preponderance of pro-life submissions mirrors Pro-Life Campaign poll findings that most people support Dáil legislation to protect human embryos.

Or to look at it the other way round, the fact that the majority of submissions match what the majority of the general public think bespeaks a political energy and organisational commitment in the pro-life community likely to translate into a political dividend for election candidates supporting legislation protecting embryos and a political cost for those who don’t.

* Ethical Scientific and Legal Issues Concerning Stem Cell Research: Opinion (2008), (p. 94)