“A Ghost Haunts Ireland” – Liam Neeson Delivers Powerful Message For Repeal

“It’s time Irish political leaders stopped turning their backs on women and committed to a referendum to repeal the 8th amendment”.

The couple attended an Amnesty global event in Belfast, earlier this week calling for a change to Ireland’s abortion laws. The self-described human rights group “protect[s] people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied” – after they’re born, that is.

Neeson says: “A ghost haunts Ireland”. A cruel ghost of the last century…

Any woman who has an abortion in Ireland faces up to 14 years in prison, and women are only allowed to legally terminate a pregnancy when their life is deemed to be in immediate danger of death. Most of this “ghost of paper and ink” is perfectly acceptable. A constitution written for a different time. It is the shadow of the country we hoped we had left behind.

Finally, the camera pans to a cross on a gravestone, while Neeson says, “Ireland doesn’t have to be chained to its past. It’s time to lay this ghost of rest”.

“Ireland’s abortion laws are among the most restrictive and punitive in the world and that is why it was important to me to make this film”, Linehan said, according to Irish news sites.

The Guardian writes that approximately ten women travel from Ireland to Britain or another part of Europe to have an abortion every day, an option that’s obviously not available to many women due to practical or financial constraints.

Graham and Helen found out their baby had acrania (a condition that means the skull has not fully formed over the brain) when they went for their 12-week scan. “She would have had to carry the child knowing it would die in great pain shortly after she had given birth to it”. Still, as someone who can easily imagine herself in the same position as Linehan (and countless Irish women), it’s hard to be sympathetic to a male-led backlash that condemns abortion rights just as sweepingly as it condemns the ad’s supposed anti-Catholic subtext.

Matthew Archbold of the National Catholic Register calls “Chains”, the 1 minute, 36 second long ad, “blatantly anti-Catholic”.

Make no mistake, the forces of secularization and abortion know who their enemy is, it is the one institution that stands for a radical commitment to love and the sacredness of human life. I understand they want to turn their backs on the Church and march away.