Ireland lawmakers vote to legalize abortion in some cases
Lawmakers have overwhelmingly voted to back Ireland’s first bill on abortion, legalizing the practice in exceptional cases where doctors deem the woman’s life at risk.
DUBLIN—Lawmakers overwhelmingly voted Friday to back Ireland’s first bill on abortion, legalizing the practice in exceptional cases where doctors deem the woman’s life at risk from her pregnancy, as the predominantly Catholic country took its first legislative step away from an outright ban.
Exhausted legislators applauded Friday’s 127-31 vote, while outside the parliament gates abortion rights activists cheered as they watched the result on their smartphones. It capped a grueling debate that locked lawmakers in argument from Wednesday morning to 5 a.m. Thursday and, after a pause for sleep, through midnight Friday.
Catholic conservatives vowed to drive his centrist Fine Gael party from power for violating its 2011 campaign pledge not to legislate on abortion. The government drafted the bill in response to last year’s case of a miscarrying woman who died in an Irish hospital from blood poisoning nearly a week after being refused a termination. The death highlighted Ireland’s failure for two decades to draft abortion legislation in support of a 1992 Supreme Court judgment ruling that life-saving abortions, including to prevent suicides, should be legal in Ireland.
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