Readers' Blog: Retention of Eighth a no-brainer
Last Sunday I attended the Pro Life National Conference in the RDS in Dublin. There were excellent presentations from all speakers. However, when I went home I was feeling slightly deflated and questioning myself.
Former president of UCD Students’ Union Katie Ascough gave a very personal account of how her pro-life views began to be formulated. When she was 15 years old her mother had a miscarriage and she described holding the 13-week-old foetus. She could clearly see the hands and feet on the tiny little baby.
Lord Alton, a member of the House of Lords, gave the English perspective where abortion on demand has been legal since 1967. In the UK a shocking 8.8m abortions have taken place in that time period.
Abby Johnson, who for eight years worked for Planned Parenthood, one of the world’s largest abortion providers, gave harrowing descriptions of the at times gross methods used by abortionists in order to remove the baby from the womb. I found this disturbing and especially so as I knew Ms Johnson was speaking from experience.
To me, retention of the Eighth Amendment is a no-brainer. Yet as we know there is a growing movement of people who want constitutional protection of unborn babies to be abolished. Is there something wrong with my thinking? I am asking myself, why cannot everyone see what appears to be a very straightforward issue to me — that unborn babies are as human as you and I and should be afforded the same rights and protections in our laws.
Until someone persuades me that unborn babies aren’t human, I fail to see the logic of the pro-choice argument.
