(Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay)

One of the more disheartening aspects of being pro-life is how isolated we can feel. While it’s true that one third of voters opposed the removal of the Eight Amendment six years ago, it’s also true that in the meantime public opinion has shifted in favour of abortion. In fact, here at the Minimise Project we’re pretty firmly convinced that Irish people have generally pro-choice views. Furthermore, the media is obviously biased in favour of the pro-choice position, as are our political and social institutions, not to mention many of our families and friends. I often feel like I’m surrounded by pro-choice people, and it can get lonely.

Having said that, I think there are actually some benefits for the pro-life side from being so much in the minority – and I think we can even use them to our advantage if we’re willing to think outside the box a bit.

We know the pro-choice story

One unavoidable consequence of being interested in abortion in Ireland is that we know the pro-choice story inside out at this stage. We know their arguments, we know their rhetoric, we know the talking points they return to again and again. This is not to disparage pro-choice people – they have strong beliefs and they make a good case! It’s just acknowledging the reality that when you hear the same story again and again, you get to know it.

Knowing the pro-choice story is a huge benefit to us. We’re far less likely to get caught on the hop, or to encounter an argument or an idea we’re not used to. This means in turn that we have a lot of time and opportunity to prepare for conversations with pro-choice people, and it also means that if we ever do encounter a pro-choice idea that we don’t have a response to, we can ask our pro-life friends – chances are they have some ideas!

By the way, feel free to contact us if you’re ever stuck in a conversation with someone on the issue of abortion – we’d love to hear about it and help if we can!

We have the element of surprise – if we’ll use it

The fact that the pro-choice side of the story is so well-known has a flip-side to it – pro-choice people are far less likely to have heard the pro-life side of the story! Even if they have heard pro-life arguments, they’re less likely to be as familiar with pro-life arguments as we are with pro-choice arguments.

Why is this an advantage? Because when you’re trying to change someone’s mind about something, a really useful tool is curiosity. When someone is curious about something, it opens their mind, makes them less hostile, and helps them ask questions and probe. Hearing the same arguments over and over makes us tune out at best and gets our backs up at worst. However, hearing new arguments that we haven’t encountered before can pique curiosity – and make us keep listening.

However: this means that pro-life people should try new arguments that people won’t have heard before! Often we feel the need to respond to each and every pro-choice talking point. I think this is a mistake. By using arguments the other person has not heard, we have a better chance of piquing their curiosity. Pro-life people have an advantage in that we are in a better position to use arguments that the standard pro-choice person has not heard – we just have to think outside the box! To get you started, we recommend the Equal Rights Argument and the Conjoined Twins Argument.

We see their playbook

Another advantage of the prevalence of the pro-choice mindset is that pro-choice strategy is pretty much an open secret. For example, today, Amnesty International released their State of the World’s Human Rights report for 2024, in which, to the surprise of absolutely no one, they recommended that Ireland implement the recommendations in the review of our abortion legislation, carried out by barrister Marie O’Shea. This is how it’s going to be until the General Election and beyond – continue to roll out the same report, and the same arguments. The legislative changes they want are totally clear, as are general pro-choice strategies around pregnancy and parenting policies.

The pro-life side, however, can think creatively if we want to. Many pro-life activists believe the best thing we can do is continue to use the media, to the best of our abilities, to point out the flaws in the report, and continue to use our time and money to try to elect pro-life candidates at local, national and EU level in an effort to reduce the probability that the O’Shea recommendations will be enacted. However, if we decided to try a different approach, we can do so somewhat “undercover”. We could come up with a new strategy relatively privately if we wanted to, and redirect our efforts without this being immediately apparent to others. We could use this to our advantage, if we did think that expanding the pro-life toolkit might be worth a shot.

When the deck is stacked against us to the extent it is, there aren’t a huge number of opportunities available to the pro-life movement – but this is all the more reason to try to take the opportunities that do present themselves! In my view, it’s worth a shot!

Muireann