Prime Minister, Abortion Rights Groups Claim Win In Ireland
By GREGORY KATZ and Renata Brito | May 26, 2018 9:38 am
DUBLIN (AP) — Abortion rights activists proclaimed victory for social justice Saturday as exit polls and early results indicated Ireland had voted overwhelmingly to repeal a 1983 constitutional ban on abortions.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, speaking Saturday before official results were announced, said it appeared that voters chose to liberalize Ireland’s strict laws on abortion — only allowed when a woman’s life is at risk — by a more than two-to-one margin.
“The people have spoken,” said Varadkar, a medical doctor who campaigned for repeal in Friday’s historic referendum. “The people have said that we want a modern constitution for a modern country, that we trust women and we respect them to make the right decision and the right choices about their health care.”
Calling the result a culmination of a “quiet revolution” that had been gaining strength in the last 20 years, Varadkar said the large margin of victory will give his government a greater mandate when enacting new abortion legislation through parliament.
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