Our friends at Students for Life Ireland have been running a this series of blog posts for awhile now. In each post a different young person explains why they oppose abortion. Several authors talked about the lives of siblings with life limiting conditions who died shortly after they were born. We are posting links to these stories here.
This is an article two of our founding members wrote in September 2017 – a year and a half before the referendum on abortion in Ireland. (The article was published in the University Times, one of the two student-run newspapers at Trinity College Dublin.) Two years later, some of the questions it posed are as […]
The Eighth Amendment provides for only one right: the right of the unborn child to be born alive. It does not provide for a right to be born safely. We believe that the Eighth is being used as a scapegoat and a means for doctors to use methods, such as Active Management of Labour, that suit them and their hospitals the most.
“The Committee is concerned about perceptions in society stigmatizing persons with disabilities as living a life of less value and the termination of pregnancy at any stage on the basis of foetal impairment. The Committee recommends that the State party changes abortion law accordingly.”
The evening before the Rally for Life, some of us got together and made posters. This was really fun and it was great coming up with different slogans to show a side of the pro-life movement that isn’t as obvious as it could or should be, e.g. pro-life feminism. The next day at the rally, so many people talked to us about our signs. Some were curious, some were hostile, but most thought they were fantastic!
If you’re part of a movement that people have negative impressions of, these impressions can be quite difficult to dispel. This is sometimes what it’s like trying to convince people feminism isn’t some hypocritical, self-centred movement for rich western women. It’s also what it can be like for pro-life feminists trying to win over our pro-choice counter parts – there are some pretty common ideas that people will believe about you without necessarily having any good reason to do so. Here are some ideas and tactics I think could help counter that.
