Until last month, the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution embodied the principle of the equal right to life of a mother and her unborn child. This is the same principle that the right-to-life movement in the U.S. would like to enforce on all of us through repealing Roe v. Wade, and by driving through anti-abortion legislation at the state level.

The people of Ireland have found the Eighth Amendment to be cruel and inhumane. In this overwhelmingly Catholic country, two-thirds of the people who cast ballots in the recent referendum voted to remove the Eighth Amendment from their constitution. In the words of the Irish head of government, the Irish will now “trust and respect women to make their own decisions and choices.”

If we in the United States do not fight to defend our right as women to make the decisions about our own bodies, we will end up with the same kind of draconian laws that for decades have ruined thousands of lives in Ireland, and that the people of Ireland have had to fight so long and hard to overturn.

Our bodies are our bodies. We must defend without qualification the right of women to make the decisions about their own bodies, and to have access to a full range of health care, including contraception and abortion. We need to call our political representatives at the state and federal levels and insist that they fight on our behalf to protect these rights.

Terrie Frisbie

Newcastle

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