(Photo: Life Institute, Ireland)

(CNSNews.com) – Pro-life campaigners in Ireland have vowed to keep fighting after sustaining a crushing blow in Friday’s referendum on repealing the 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution, which for 35 years has given equal status to a mother and her unborn child.

“Every time an unborn child has his or her life ended in Ireland, we will oppose that, and make our voices known,” said the “Save the 8th” campaign in a statement. “Abortion was wrong yesterday. It remains wrong today. The constitution has changed, but the facts have not.”

“Today is a sad day for Ireland and for people who believe in genuine human rights,” said Cora Sherlock, deputy chair of the Pro Life Campaign. “The struggle to defend the most vulnerable has not ended today, it’s just changed. Thank you to all the incredible people who worked so hard to protect women and save babies. We fight on.”

Ireland’s prime minister has pledged to have abortion legislation in place by the end of the year following Friday’s vote, which saw a 66.4 to 33.6 percent vote in favor of overturning the amendment. Turnout in Friday’s vote was 64.1 percent.

The proposed legislation will allow abortions in all circumstances during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Between 12 and 24 weeks’ gestation, abortion would be allowed in cases of risk to a mother’s life or risk of serious harm to the mother’s health.

“We are not a divided country,” Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said after the results were announced, saying that in almost every county, men and women, all social classes and almost all age groups, had voted to repeal. (Only one county, Donegal in the north, voted to keep the 8th Amendment. Exit polls found large majority of young voters supported repeal, while over-65s were the only age group that did not.)

In a message for those who lost the vote – the “no” camp – Varadkar said they may feel that Ireland “is a country that you no longer recognize.”

“I want to reassure you that Ireland today is the same country that it was last week, but just a little more tolerant, more open and more respectful.”

In response, Irish Times columnist Breda O’Brien – a rare pro-life voice in the Irish media – wrote: “Ireland has become a different place, not a more tolerant, open and respectful place, but a place with a heart closed to the ones who will die because they are not deemed human enough to be protected.

The “exhausted and grieving” pro-lifer campaigners, said O’Brien, “have not given up and they will not disappear. The next phase begins now, taking inspiration from countries that have had the profoundly inhumane practice of abortion for decades but still have strong pro-life movements.”

‘A changed culture for Ireland’

Some 78 percent of Irish are Roman Catholics. The 8th Amendment was introduced in 1983 after 67 percent of voters supported it in a referendum with a 53 percent turnout. That pro-life vote came four years after Pope John Paul II paid the first papal visit ever to Ireland.

No pope has visited Ireland since, but Friday’s vote to repeal the amendment comes three months before Pope Francis is due to do so.

Pope Francis did not mention the vote in his address Sunday in St. Peter’s Square. But Archbishop Eamon Martin, the primate of All-Ireland, decried the outcome, saying it “confirms that we are living in a new time and a changed culture for Ireland.”

“Like many others who advocated a No vote in the referendum, I am deeply saddened that we appear to have obliterated the right to life of all unborn children from our constitution, and that this country is now on the brink of legislating for a liberal abortion regime,” Martin said.

Meanwhile celebrating “yes” campaigners turned their attention to Northern Ireland, which due to its peculiar history will not be affected by the referendum result but also does not share the liberal abortion laws of the rest of the United Kingdom, allowing it only if a mother’s life is at risk.

Since last year’s U.K. elections, Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has depended on the support of Northern Ireland’s conservative Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which strongly opposes liberalizing abortion laws.

DUP leader Arlene Foster stressed at the weekend that the Irish referendum result had no impact north of the border, but May is facing calls at home from the Labor opposition and some Conservatives to act in Northern Ireland.

May’s own views were evident in a weekend tweet praising the Irish referendum as “an impressive show of democracy which delivered a clear and unambiguous result.” She congratulated the winning camp, and ended with the celebratory hashtag “#repealedthe8th.”

May’s minister responsible for “women, sexual orientation and transgender equality,” Penny Mordaunt, tweeted that the referendum vote marked “a historic & great day for Ireland, & a hopeful one for Northern Ireland. That hope must be met.”