We knew this would happen

When Ireland was forced to hold another vote in October on the Lisbon Treaty, giving the European Parliament sweeping power and authority over individual nations, its promoters promised Irish voters the new authority would not affect the Irish constitution, and that Ireland would maintain its sovereignty in constitutionally protected rights.

The only people they fooled were the ones who voted ‘Yes’ to the Lisbon Treaty. The others knew what was coming. It didn’t take long.

Irish abortion laws and sovereignty stand in the dock next week when the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) hears a challenge to Ireland’s constitutional protection of life “from conception.”

Third-party interveners Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, the European Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defense Fund (on behalf of Family Research Council), contend that it is “Ireland’s sovereign right to determine when life begins” and what rights attach to pre-natal life. They also claim that domestic remedies have not been exhausted, and that therefore the ECHR lacks jurisdiction to hear the case.

Ireland’s constitution “acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.” The country’s recent approval of the Lisbon Treaty after receiving guarantees that its pro-life constitution would remain unaffected has raised the stakes of the Court’s decision.

This is what the Irish ‘No’ vote warned of, possibly the end of that country’s constitutional right to life and the sovereignty to uphold those protections.