No, this is incorrect because every country to ever legalise abortion, has shown that abortion on demand, in some form or another, comes after legalisation.

The recognition that the floodgates will open comes from evidence, not fear, and  much debate has arisen from the call to repeal the 8th Amendment and what implications that could have on the spread of abortion.

Many from the Repeal the 8th Coalition like to tell the media that they are not interested in abortion on demand or opening of the floodgates so to speak, but in reality they support it 100%.

What is clear is that if the 8th Amendment is taken away, so too is the legal safeguard protecting the right to life of the unborn. For many in the Repeal the 8th movement this may be a welcome change, but as a nation are we really prepared to accept abortions for any reason and at any stage of the baby’s development? If we allow this, abortion will be regarded as no more than another form of birth control.

The Repeal the 8th movement feed us the usual nonsense that just because abortion is legal in some jurisdiction does not mean that there are abortions on demand. If they took time to do a simple Google search they would find that after abortions become legal, it does not take that long for abortion on demand to become the accepted norm.1

The clearest way to look on how the floodgates have been opened when abortion was introduced is to look at Britain.

The 1967 Abortion Act was introduced by the liberal MP David Steel to deal with the small number tragic cases of back street abortions. It was argued by the proponents of the legislation that it would be restrictive, the number of abortions would be limited and it certainly would not open the ‘floodgates’.

However, already by 1971 obstetrician and gynaecologists who refused to provide abortions, were put under pressure. Although those in senior posts were protected by the ‘conscience clause’ in the Act others were forced out of the specialism, or out of the country, as pro-abortion officials in the Department of Health demanded that NHS hospitals should provide wide access to abortion services.Within a short period the abortion rate started to sky-rocket in the UK.2

In 1990, the abortion law was amended to accommodate new abortion techniques and to extend abortion for disabled babies up to birth (previously it had been restricted to the point at which the baby could be born alive).

The key clause of the law says an abortion can be performed if two doctors decide that ‘the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, or of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated’.

Another clause of the 1967 Abortion Act says that ‘account may be taken of the pregnant woman’s actual or reasonably foreseeable environment’. This has been widened as legal justification for abortion on grounds of gender, the argument being that women from some cultural backgrounds may be at risk if they have girls.

All but a few of the abortions in England and Wales every year are carried out on the legal grounds that the pregnancy threatens the woman’s mental health as evidence from Marie Stopes abortion clinics shows. 

Many of the doctors who approve abortions never see the patient for whom they are making a termination possible, and for whom they are certifying that pregnancy carries a serious health risk.

Last year there were a shocking 185,596 abortions among women who lived in England and Wales under the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act.3

There is now pressure to allow abortion right up to the moment of birth for any reason. The Repeal the 8th lobby want abortion to be completely decriminalised which is similar to the proposal that Amnesty International want to introduce in Ireland.

One pro-choice activist Ann Furedi of BPAS, at least had the courage to tell the truth about what pro-choice activists want. It has been stated that, “Furedi is one of the most intellectually open and honest of all abortion lobbyists, and unlike the majority of people on either side of the abortion debate, she is strikingly (if hideously) consistent in her view that abortion should be available for any reason at any stage of gestation. In her view, the autonomy of the mother outweighs any intrinsic rights or value her unborn child may have.”4