Pro-life groups have strongly condemned the Government’s decision to ram through its flawed abortion legislation, labelling it as a “betrayal of unborn children, a betrayal of a party promise and a betrayal of the Irish people”. They have called for the Bill to be put to the people in a referendum under Article 27. Admiration was expressed for the deputies who had put principle before politics to vote No to the bill, while other politicians have been described as 'spineless and amoral' for breaking their pro-life promise.

Speaking outside the Dáil today where the legislation was being discussed, Clare Molloy of Youth Defence described it as a “dark day for Ireland when the legislature close their ears to the medical evidence, turn their backs on the electorate to which they promised no abortion legislation, and have now legalised the death penalty for innocent unborn children."

“This bill is barbaric,” said Ms. Molloy. "As Labour TD Roisin Shortall has pointed out, it has no term limits. It allows for the direct killing of a physically healthy baby being carried by a physically healthy mother and allows it through all nine months of pregnancy”. She continued “what kind of politician or doctors approves the killing of a fully formed human being at 22 weeks by lethal injection to the heart. Our leading doctors are opposing this legislation; because, as one if them told the Oireachtas Committee, the Bill legalises the mindless assassination of innocent human beings”.

“We know that abortion is not a treatment for suicide, the psychiatrists are blue in the face from telling Enda Kenny that, but yet he chooses to ignore this evidence and says his hands are tied by the Supreme Court decision in the X Case. It  is now clear that that decision was fundamentally flawed because we didn’t have the evidence that we now know. Clean out your ears Taoiseach, if a decision is wrong then we shouldn’t follow it. The people are the final courts of appeal in this democracy and 86% of us want a referendum” Ms. Molloy concluded.

Niamh Ui Bhriain of the Life Institute said Mr Kenny was acting in an “autocratic and bullying manner and had trampled all over conscience rights by denying a free vote within his party on an issue that was deeply conscientious and on which strong views were held”. She went on to say that the electorate would not forget the vindictive action taken by Mr Kenny in inflicting such harsh sanctions and penalties on those party colleagues who dared to defy his authoritarian whip.

“It disgusts me that the Taoiseach would demand that his party colleagues should vote in favour of this horrific and fundamentally flawed piece of legislation and threaten them with being thrown out of the party if they fail to do so. What kind of a leader is he? What kind of a leader throws a colleague out of the party for doing exactly what they told their electorate they were going to do before election?” she said.

Both the Life Institute and Youth Defence called for a vote on this legislation under Article 27 of the Irish Constitution. They said the huge Rally for Life which attracted 60,000 people last weekend, showed the pro life movement was committed and mobilised and would be now open to the new political alternative created by Kenny's abortion bill.