Over 66% voters favour scrapping anti-abortion laws in Ireland
Dublin, May 27: A total of 66.4 per cent of voters voted to scrap the present anti-abortion laws in Ireland in a referendum, according to the final results announced by a returning officer here on Saturday.
A total of 33.6 per cent of voters chose to retain the present abortion laws, or widely known as the Eighth Amendment among locals, that virtually ban abortions in the country, said the returning officer Barry Ryan.
Ryan declared the above results of the referendum in front of a large cheering crowd of people gathering at a central count center at Dublin Castle, a main government complex in the Irish capital of Dublin, Xinhua reported.
According to Ryan, nearly 3.37 million voters were registered for the referendum and 64.1 per cent of them turned out in Friday's voting with some 6,000 votes declared invalid.
The turnout of the referendum was one of the highest in any referendums ever held in Ireland and this indicated how important the abortion issue meant for the Irish people.
The referendum received an overwhelming victory in almost all the 40 constituencies across the country except in Donegal, a constituency in the country's northwest, with 51.9 per cent of voters voting against repealing the Eighth Amendment.
Dublin ranked in the first place in terms of Yes vote for ending the constitutional ban in the country with a Yes vote of 75.5 per cent, followed by the eastern region of Leinster (66.6 per cent), the southwest region of Munster (63.3 per cent), and the midwest and northwest regions of Connacht and Ulster (57.5 per cent), according to the official results of the referendum.
A breakdown of the voting results indicated that the more developed a region, the higher it has the Yes vote.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the referendum marked a culmination of "a quite revolution" which has taken place in the country over the last few decades.
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Bhopal gas tragedy: Effects of leak seen in next generation of survivors, says ex-forensic doctor
Bhopal (PTI): The effects of poisonous gases that leaked from the Union Carbide factory in Madhya Pradesh's Bhopal 40 years ago were seen in the next generations of those who survived the tragedy, a former government forensic doctor has said.
At least 3,787 people were killed, and more than five lakh were affected after a toxic gas leaked from the pesticide factory in the city on the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984.
Speaking at an event held by organisations of gas tragedy survivors on Saturday, Dr D K Satpathy, former head of the forensics department of Bhopal's Gandhi Medical College, said he performed 875 post-mortems on the first day of the disaster and witnessed 18,000 autopsies the next five years.
Sathpathy claimed Union Carbide had denied questions about the effects of poisonous gases on unborn children of women survivors and said effects would not cross the placental barrier in the womb in any condition.
He said blood samples of pregnant women who died in the tragedy were examined, and it was found that 50 per cent of poisonous substances found in the mother were also found in the child in her womb.
Children born to surviving mothers had the poisonous substances in their system, and this affected the health of the next generation, Sathpathy claimed and questioned why research on this was stopped.
Such effects will continue for generations, he said.
Satpathy said it was said that MIC gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant, and when it came in contact with water, thousands of gases were formed, and some of these caused cancer, blood pressure and liver damage.
Rachna Dhingra of Bhopal Group for Information and Action said Satpathy, who carried out most autopsies, and other first responders in the 1984 disaster, including the senior doctors in the emergency ward and persons involved in mass burials, narrated their experiences during the event.
Rashida Bee, president of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh, a poster exhibition covering every aspect of the disaster will be held till December 4 to mark the 40th anniversary of the tragedy.
An anniversary rally will be organised, with focus on global corporate crimes such as industrial pollution and climate change, she said.
