Mags GarganAbout 30,000 people take part in pro-life march
Organisers estimate that about 30,000 people attended the All Ireland Rally for Life in Dublin on Saturday, which heard that unborn babies with a disability should receive special protection and not become targets for abortion.
A colourful crowd holding posters declaring ‘Vote Pro-Life’ and ‘Every Life Matters’ marched from Parnell Square to the Dáil, where a stage was set up for speakers.
Anne Trainer, whose son Kevin has Down Syndrome, told the crowd that offering abortion for any form of a disability is discrimination, and warned that Ireland could follow Britain’s failure to protect its most vulnerable children, with 90% of babies with Down Syndrome being aborted before birth.
The biggest cheer of the day was given to Mary Bridget Kelly, who has Down Syndrome and told the crowd that “people with special needs have a right to life”.
Incompatible
Mandy Dunne of Every Life Counts said when doctors described her daughter Muireann, who was diagnosed with Trisomy 13 before birth, as “incompatible with life” she felt “those words took her life from me there and then”. “I was made feel I wasn’t carrying a beautiful little girl, that she was something that didn’t even have the right to be considered as a life, dismissed with suggestions of a termination. But Muireann went on to live with us after birth for six weeks, and she knew nothing but love.”
Niamh Uí Bhriain of the Life Institute said that people attending the rally were looking ahead to the general election in 2016 to ensure “that politicians understand that the majority of people do not want abortion on demand legalised in Ireland”.
The Rally for Life is organised by Youth Defence, the Life Institute and Precious Life. A few hundred pro-abortion activists gathered on O’Connell Street as a counter-protest to the rally.