I’ve collected my thoughts as posted on Facebook below.  Hopefully, you will find it useful.

My Position

Just to be clear: I am for protecting babies from being murdered in this State whether in the womb or outside it. This means I support keeping the constitutional protection in place and I am against repealing the 8th Amendment under any circumstances. The current legal set up adequately protects the mother in all situations where her baby might endanger her life. Doctors and other medical staff who are put in the very rare and unfortunate position of having to deal with these cases are also well protected in the current set up. I don’t hold to the position that a woman who has been raped has the right to end the innocent life of the product of that union neither do I believe that a child with a life threatening condition or disability should have their lives deliberately shortened because of it.

Eugenics

One of my reasons for not wanting to repeal the 8th is the eugenics legalised abortion on demand encourages.  See this article from Christian Today.

Today’s Legal Position (while the 8th Amendment is in place)

According to Irish law it is a crime to murder an innocent person. It is immaterial what age that person is or who carries out the murder.

On the Irish Supreme Court Judgement of 7th March 2018

The phrase “the law is an ass” has taken on a new meaning for me after today’s Supreme Court judgement. How can seven learned people come to such a ludicrous conclusion: a child is not a child when it is in the womb? This means, that they have judged that a child at any stage in the womb has no rights at all under the constitution except the right to life guaranteed by the 8th Amendment. There is now every reason for keeping the 8th amendment in place.

Aontas.

Excellent statement from an association of bible believing christians which I fully agree with:

Aontas’ Statement on the Eight Amendment
As an association of Bible believing churches in Ireland, we are deeply concerned about the current proposals to repeal the 8th Amendment.
We hold that all human life is precious. The ultimate foundation of this is the Bible’s teaching that we are made in the image of God. That gives every human being immense dignity, worth, value and meaning, regardless of size, shape, nationality, ability or colour.
The circumstances surrounding this new life may be hard and difficult, but each life is valuable because God formed and shaped it for a purpose. We thank God for the life of every child, no matter the circumstances surrounding their conception, or the length of days given to them.
As a nation we have not excelled in living out the implications of the preciousness of all life. We have failed mothers and babies. We have created stigma and shame instead of creating an environment of grace and love. We need to do better at providing support: emotional, mental, physical and spiritual. And we need to do better in providing loving, long-term alternatives like adoption.
But our shortcomings do not give us the right to determine who should be born and who should not. God alone is the author of life. His word is clear that life begins at conception (Psalm 51:5). Modern science has only underlined the truth of the Bible’s ancient claim.
Since God alone is the author of life, only he has the right to determine who lives and who does not. Much is made of the mother’s right over her own body, but from conception a new and separate person is formed within her. She has the responsibility to preserve the life of this new person but never the right to take it.
We acknowledge that difficult medical circumstances may arise where the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child cannot both be preserved. However the wilful killing of an unborn child by abortion is indefensible.
In choosing abortion we would declare that all human life is not valuable, that discrimination is permissible; we would make ourselves the determiners of a person’s worth, and worse still, take God’s work of divine skill and destroy it—denying His wisdom and purpose in creating it (Psalm 139).
There are some things we shouldn’t be free to do—denying another person their humanity is one of them, defacing God’s artistry is another.
The Irish Constitution magnificently recognises the worth of both mother and baby—far in advance of many other countries. It is not backward, but progressive. It is God-honouring and person-exalting.
We therefore urge our churches’ members and our fellow citizens to resist the call to repeal the Eighth Amendment, and to continue to work towards a richer, better, more grace-filled society.