[Image by Iqbal Nuril Anwar from Pixabay]

I remember once watching a current affairs TV programme in Ireland, around 2011, when the issue of abortion was raised by a member of the audience. What he had to say surprised me: he said that he was pro-choice, and found it very frustrating that despite decades of activism, the pro-choice movement in Ireland had achieved essentially nothing.

As a pro-life person, I was very taken aback: we felt we were the ones constantly on the back foot. We were the ones always on the defensive, always having to counter another biased media report, always having to pour everything into getting any pro-life politicians elected, only to see them do nothing of substance to support the pro-life movement. Suddenly, though, I saw how things must look from the pro-choice side. They saw what they considered to be dreadful oppression of women taking place in a modern, twenty-first-century country, with no ‘progress’ whatsoever made on even the most basic attempts to liberalise the Irish abortion regime.

This made me see the question of abortion in a whole new light. Where pro-life and pro-choice people alike saw two decades of constant setbacks and even betrayal, I now saw a stalemate. Nothing really moved for either side. With the exception of a knife-edge referendum in 2002, Ireland simply ignored both sides of the abortion debate for two decades.

In a stalemate, there might be something to be said for continuing to do what you’re doing. Sometimes, holding the line is all you can do. The pro-life side, however, subsequently suffered massive setbacks. The stalemate finally gave way.

When any group of activists find their strategy failed, a rethink is crucial. When you have decisive evidence that decades of effort yielded a stalemate followed by a massive defeat, it’s time to try something new.

This blog post is not about whether the pro-life movement in Ireland has sufficiently changed its strategy in the last seven years. Rather, I want to focus on individual actions by pro-life people. I encourage anyone who has been active in the pro-life movement for seven years or more to think back over what you have changed since 2018. Have you changed your approach to the pro-life issue at all? Or are you still doing more or less what you did in and before 2018 (using the same talking points, sharing the same social media content, writing letters to the editor, emailing TDs, or whatever it was you did)? If so, it’s worth asking yourself: if that didn’t work for 30 years (and it didn’t! Stalemate followed by defeat, remember?), why would it work now?

Instead, I encourage every pro-life person to take on this simple challenge: try doing one new thing you haven’t done before for the pro-life movement. Try moving out of your comfort zone just once, and see how you get on. What’s the worst that could happen? (No, seriously: write down all your worst fears! They may not be that bad!).

For my part, I wanted to try new stuff so badly I co-founded the Minimise Project, in a serious effort to try something new in the pro-life movement. We’re focused on conversations, and we’re focused on particular kinds of conversations: conversations that redirect people to the two main questions – ultimately, the only questions – at the heart of the abortion debate. I’ve also tried putting my money where my mouth is and have started raising the topic of abortion, and my own pro-life views, more regularly. Finally, I’ve updated my pro-life elevator pitch, largely because I realised the importance of focusing on the two main questions underlying abortion.

If you’re convinced that maybe you should try doing one thing differently as a pro-life advocate, but you’re not sure what to try, we have a suggestion: try attending a Minimise Project workshop where you’ll learn how to have better conversations about abortion. We have two workshops planned for the coming months: sign up here for details!

Muireann