Over 10,000 people attended the All-Ireland ‘Rally for Life‘ in Dublin on Saturday, which served as a reminder to the Irish government that support for the pro-life cause in Ireland has not gone away. Despite the vote in 2018 to remove the constitutional protection for the unborn child and impose in its place the most liberal abortion regime in Europe, the pro-life cause in Ireland is alive and well.
Since the removal of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland, abortion figures have increased year on year, manifesting the warnings of pro-life advocates prior to the referendum – warnings that were dismissed as scaremongering by the government, abortion advocates and the media in Ireland.
New data provided by Ireland’s Health Service Executive on May 25 revealed that there were 8,876 abortions performed in Ireland in 2022 alone, a 33 per cent increase from 2021.
Speaking at a Mass in Dominican St Saviour’s Church before the march, Bishop Kevin Doran, chair of the Bishops’ Council for Life in Ireland, spoke strongly to a packed church against the government’s continued assault on the unborn child, highlighting concerted attempts to increase the number of abortions in Ireland through a tightly managed “review” of the abortion legislation.
“The recent review on the operation of the Termination of Pregnancy Act is a good example of how the truth is often the first victim of abortion,” he said. “In the first place this was not a review of the Act in itself, but only a review of how it operates. In other words, the Government was not interested in what people thought about abortion. All they wanted was to establish whether the act was effective in what it set out to do, namely ending the lives of unborn babies.”
Bishop Doran highlighted the government’s lack of interest in why abortions are being sought and carried out in Ireland, deliberately ensuring legislation did not require any data collection or analysis as happens in the UK.
“[A]s official statistics show, a staggering 98 per cent of all abortions carried out in Ireland take place during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, when no explanation or reason is required or recorded,” he went on to explain. “There is no evidence whatsoever that those abortions have anything to do with healthcare…The reality, however, is that while the legislation is about providing abortion, there is nothing in the legislation that is designed to find out why thirty thousand women sought abortion over the past four years, what were their circumstances physically, economically or emotionally, what other options they might have been given, or what has happened to them since.”
One of the main issues proposed in the “review” is the removal of the three-day waiting period for mothers seeking abortion. This pause period has saved thousands of lives over the past three years in Ireland, yet is considered an unwanted obstacle by advocates.
“Once again, when it comes to the three-day waiting period, the truth is inconvenient and so it is ignored,” explained Bishop Doran. “The purpose of the three days between the certification by the doctor and the actual abortion, was to provide a window of opportunity for a woman to consider the decision she is about to make and to explore whether she might have other options.
“According to HSE figures, large numbers of women (27 per cent) do not return after the three days, indicating that over a quarter of women change their minds for one reason or another. The three-day waiting period works, not only to save babies, but to save women from a decision that they may regret for the rest of their lives.”
Speaking later that day at the rally Peadar Tóibin, leader of Aontú, a recently formed pro-life party that operates in the Republic and Northern Ireland, hammered home the point:
“What really amazed people today was that fact that neither the author of the abortion review nor her team actually spoke to one mother who availed of the three day wait time and proceeded to have her child.
“The author of the abortion review didn’t speak to one of the 130 mothers who are suing the state because they suffered an adverse effect from the so-called abortion services either. She didn’t speak to the mother of baby Christopher, a healthy baby who was late-term aborted under the so-called “foetal fatal abnormality” section of the law. It looks like she didn’t speak to anyone who would have a different view to her.”
Co-organisers of the Rally, Bernadette Smyth, leader of Precious Life in the North, and Niamh Ui Bhriain of the Life Institute in Dublin, spoke of the challenges facing the pro-life cause on both sides of the border. They were joined by pro-life independent Member of Parliament Mattie McGrath and independent Senator Sharon Keoghan. Vikki Wall, founder of Every Life Counts, pleaded with the government and others to stop devaluing babies with life-limiting conditions.
The show was stolen by Conor O’Dowd, a young chef with Down’s Syndrome, who spoke passionately to Ireland’s politicians about seeking to write people like himself out of Irish life. Conor’s letter to Dr Fergal Malone, Master of the Rotunda Hospital, about the claim that 95 per cent of babies with Down’s Syndrome diagnosed at the Rotunda were now aborted attracted national attention. He told the 10,000-strong crowd that he has yet to receive a reply.
(Photo of the All-Ireland Rally for Life, Dublin, by Dubhaltach O Reachtnin)
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