Repeal The 8th: We Must Keep Battling Until The Polls Close

“We must keep battling until the polls close.” So says Hot Press editor Niall Stokes in a major editorial on the abortion referendum, in the new issue of Hot Press.

In it, he spells out Hot Press’ position on Repealing the 8th. And he also sets it against the backdrop of the historic oppression of women in Ireland, by both the Roman Catholic Church – and, by extension, by the State itself.

“The people calling for a ’No’ vote are exactly the same censorious, authoritarian, one size fits all bullies who tried to suck the joy out of life for everyone in Ireland, at eery opportunity over the past 100 years,” he says.

“Are we going to allow them to once again assert their vindictive control over women’ lives and their bodies? Are we going to allow them to continue with the crazed fiction that an embryo’s life is equal to that of a woman who half an hour ago became pregnant – as is specifically and categorically asserted as a legal certainty in the unholy mess that is the 8th Amendment?

“Are we going to accept that this is true, even if a woman is pregnant as a result of rape?”

In a passionately expressed opinion piece, the Hot Press editor calls on good people to win the day for Repeal.

“Good people – or people who try to be good like most of us – will want to make the right choice. They will vote ‘Yes’ for compassion. For choice. For personal autonomy. For care. For love.

“In their own lives, these good people will have the right to say ’no’ to abortion for themselves. If they are directly involved in a crisis pregnancy, they will be free to choose, or to help their partner to choose, not to have an abortion. No one would want it any other way. Ever.

“But these good people will, I believe, vote ‘Yes’ because they really do understand that their friends, neighbours, colleagues and sisters are also entitled to make their own conscientious choices.”

The full, compelling text of the article is in the new issue of Hot Press. Out now.