Why American Pro-Life Dollars Are Pouring Into Ireland

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/why-american-pro-life-dollars-are-pouring-into-ireland/266981/



Ireland has some of the strictest abortion laws in the world with its constitutional guarantee of the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn. As a result, an average of 5,000 Irish women travel abroad for abortions every year while customs seize abortion pills purchased online. Compared to many other developed nations including the US, its pro-life movement would seem to be operating from an unusually dominant position, with relatively little to protest about. So why is the American pro-life lobby throwing its weight behind Ireland?

The American Pro-Life Action League recently pledged financial support, amounting to "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to the Irish pro-life lobby, according to spokesman Joseph Scheidler. Seeing Ireland as the last bastion of abortion-free Europe along with Malta, as he told the Sunday Business Post, Scheidler singled out the Irish pro-life group Youth Defence as one of the main recipients of large funds because "They need the money for publicity. Abortion is about conversion and it's very hard to convert people in masses, and that is why people like Youth Defence go out into the street."

Youth Defence is perhaps best known for the shocking, enlarged poster images of aborted fetuses that they regularly display on Dublin's main thoroughfare and at stalls and demonstrations around the country. They were founded in 1992 in the family home of a long-time conservative organizer who famously uttered the words "Go away ye wife-swapping sodomites!" at pro-divorce campaigners and had other unkind words to say about feminists who used contraception, city-dwelling feminists, and feminists who were also foreigners. Her son and daughter are also co-founders of the affiliated group The Life Institute, who are currently being investigated by the state ethics watchdog for potential breach of lobbying regulations.

70 percent of Youth Defence's Twitter followers come from the US and until recently their donation form was in dollars instead of euros. Nevertheless, the group is Irish and has quite a pedigree in Irish campaigning. Prominent spokespeople and supporters have included ultra-nationalist anti-immigration campaigners as well as anti-IVF, anti-divorce, anti-stem cell research, anti-gay rights and anti-contraception campaigners. They run national road shows, conferences, nationwide billboard campaigns and schools programmes, which they claim will make each new generation of young people "harder to fool than the abortion industry would have expected."

[PETRUS]

1. K&R

[smirkymonkey]

2. Ireland is one of the most f***ed up countries where it comes to

abortion rights. They are one of the most backward "first world" countries in the world. Case in point: The recent death of the Indian woman who was allowed to suffer to death while her doctors waited until the fetal heartbeat ceased beating, resulting in the mothers death.

The Catholic Church has way too much power in that county and until that changes they will always be a backswamp.

[Arcanetrance]

3. It's funny I support the idea protect life.

But in this context they aren't supporting the protection of life at all. These people make it seem like those that have abortions are heartless people, having known two people who've had one I can say neither took it lightly.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. k&r for the women of Ireland