Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told his Irish counterpart that abortion in Ireland should be a considered a “human right”. Mr Trudeau and Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s Taoiseach, addressed the subject at a joint press conference during the Irish leader’s three-day visit to Canada. Mr Varadkar, who is seeking to hold a referendum next year on whether to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the constitution, which protects the right to life of the unborn child, said: “We discussed the issue of abortion, which I know is an important issue for a lot of campaigners for women’s rights in Canada.” He said he had mentioned his plans to hold a referendum next year so that the “people of Ireland” can “remove our constitutional ban on abortion, should they wish to do so.” Asked whether he had any advice for Mr Varadkar, Mr Trudeau said that “reproductive rights” were a fundamental human right. “On the issue of reproductive rights, I shared our perspective that reproductive rights for women are integral to women’s rights in general and women’s rights are human rights, and I encouraged him to look at it as a question of fundamental rights for women and we had a good discussion on that,” the Canadian prime minister said. Canada has one of the laxest abortion regimes in the world, with women able to terminate their pregnancies at any stage up to birth for any reason. Mr Trudeau’s comments are the latest case of foreign intervention in Ireland’s abortion debate. Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Council said Ireland’s abortion laws violated human rights.