And Lucinda Creighton, the pro-life Minister we wrote about last week, was forced to resign. The Prime Minister did not allow a free vote on the bill.
She went on to say that the electorate would not forget the vindictive action taken by [Prime Minister] 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?” Ui Bhriain said.
Only five members of the majority Fine Gael party dared to break ranks and as a result were automatically expelled from the party.
Lucinda Creighton, one of those who voted against the abortion bill, resigned from her position as Ireland’s European Affairs Minister, saying the government broke a commitment to keep Ireland free of abortion.
“It’s very disappointing and I would rather that I wasn’t here. For me, this is a very important piece of legislation, one which is against a commitment that we made at the last election – a promise had been made, a very fundamental promise – on abortion.
“I just felt that I couldn’t remove from that promise that we made at the last election,” she told RTE News.
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Andrea adds: I like Lucinda Creighton’s integrity and will remember her name.
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Why does it seem to be that offences against life are often offences against democracy?
I totally agree. I was going to get into that this morning but I was too busy.
Oh, le sigh.