Everyone in Ireland, including courts and lawyers and politicians, agrees it effectively prohibits any and all abortions, except in some cases where the life of the mother is at stake.
Most of the big media coverage is highly editorial, highly partisan, and mostly fiercely supportive of repeal.
Even CNN has a hard time sticking to neutral coverage.
The young Americans trying to stop Ireland from voting Yes to abortion
And we get the usual mendacious behavior from the usual suspects.
Facebook Tips the Scales in Ireland’s Abortion Referendum
Says Father Marcel de la Cruz in WSJ,
[T]he Irish government and many in the traditional media have grown concerned that voters will reject their push for legalized abortion.
Social media is one of the few avenues of public outreach left to those who oppose repeal of the Irish Constitution’s pro-life Eighth Amendment, which voters overwhelmingly approved in 1983.
An independent member of the Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s lower house of Parliament, accused Prime Minister Leo Varadkar last week of lobbying Facebook to ban advertising related to the referendum on abortion.
Legislator Mattie McGrath said the ban was “preventing campaigns that have done nothing illegal from campaigning in a perfectly legal matter.”
. . . .
As a co-founder of FrontPage.org, a website that has published articles in support of the Eighth Amendment, I have seen firsthand how Facebook puts its thumb on the scale.
Earlier this month Facebook’s ad service denied our attempts to promote two op-eds by journalist Bruce Arnold of the Irish Independent, Ireland’s most popular daily newspaper.
It also blocked our attempts to promote a letter signed by more than 100 Irish lawyers defending the Eighth Amendment.
Last week Facebook’s Dublin lawyers rejected our request to restore FrontPage.org’s ability to inform the Irish public on issues regarding the referendum.
It isn’t too late for the company to admit its mistake and reverse its decision.
That would truly serve the interest of freedom, fairness and transparency.
Full disclosure: I do not accept that Russian propaganda activity in support of Trump ought per se to be regarded as scandalous, and neither do I regard criminalization of it as a good thing.
In any case it is certainly a marvel of hypocrisy, considering our own government's long tradition of extensive "interference" in other people's elections using just such, and other less savory, means.
And I am no more supportive of facebook trying to censor its users in a government-coerced effort to suppress fake news than I am of the government doing it directly.
First Amendment, free expression, don't you know.
And that is not an amendment we should repeal.
A lot of this is pure anti-Trump excess doing damage that will outlast him.
Update. Repeal of the 8th passed.
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