When it comes to the right to life and the rights of the unborn, it is impossible not to notice and indeed to lament the cultural changes that are taking place in Ireland over the last number of short years. As predicted, the number of babies being aborted by people from Ireland has increased significantly since the 8th Amendment was repealed in 2018. In a recent disclosure, the head of the Rotunda Maternity Hospital in Dublin admitted that 95% of unborn children who were diagnosed in the womb as Down Syndrome, are now aborted before they are born. This was something the public was assured would not happen by advocates of the repeal movement. But this is precisely what is happening.
As part of the legislation that followed repeal, it was enshrined in law that there be a three day waiting period between the woman/family deciding to go ahead with the abortion and the abortion taking place. Studies have shown that a significant number of people have changed their minds in this three day period, leading to the saving of approximately 1,000 lives per year.
Now legislation is before the Dail that seeks to scrap this three day period of waiting. What is becoming clear is that in the push to normalise abortion as part of health care, whether there is 10 abortions or 100 or 1,000, it does not seem to matter much any more. We have lost the sense that 1,000 is ten times more a tragedy than 100 and even lost the sense that abortion is a tragedy at all.
One man who knows that abortion is indeed a tragedy is Dr Dermot Kearney, an Irish doctor who has spent most of his professional life working in England. In this inspiring talk at the Pro-Life Conference, he urges people to 'Never Tire of Doing What is Right'.