By Sarah Mac Donald - 03 November, 2013
Pro Life campaign
The Pro Life Campaign has said it was “entirely predictable” that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service would attempt to “exploit the new abortion law in Ireland with a view to establishing abortion clinics here.”
In a statement issued in response to an ad in today’s Irish Times, PLC spokeswoman, Cora Sherlock, said the British Pregnancy Advisory Service ad was about publicity for the BPAS and had “nothing to do with protecting women’s lives.”
“The Government has made it very easy for groups like the BPAS to act like this after introducing abortion based on a threat of suicide in the full knowledge that it is not a treatment for suicidal feelings,” she warned.
The PLC spokeswoman described it as “misleading to describe abortion as healthcare. Healthcare aims to save lives not end them,” she stated.
She also suggested that the BPAS were fully aware that before abortion was introduced here, Ireland ranked as a world leader in protecting the lives of pregnant women.
She said Ireland had a better safety record than Britain, where abortion is legal on request.
The text of the ad in the Irish Times today states: “As if deciding to have an abortion wasn’t enough of a journey, almost 4,000 Irish women have to travel to Britain for help every year. We’ll care for your women until your government does.”
Separately, Youth Defence hit out at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service for “gross interference” in Ireland’s affairs over the Irish Times ad.
Youth Defence spokeswoman, Clare Molloy, said that the advert was a “callous and distasteful bid to drum up business in Ireland” and that, while the BPAS might try to dress it up otherwise, “the agency was in the business of killing unborn children for profit”.
She said it was very likely that, since the number of Irish women travelling to abortion clinics was falling, BPAS was seeking to extend its business to make a bigger market available in this country.
Youth Defence also accused BPAS of supporting gendercide which is the aborting babies because they are girls.
“In view of that support for gendercide, this advert, which claims they want to care for women, is deeply ironic,” Ms Molloy said.
Also commenting, Niamh Uí Bhriain of the Life Institute said that BPAS clearly had a “very poor grasp of cultural and historical sensitivities in Ireland, if they think that the public will support a British abortion agency interfering in Ireland’s laws.”
“Most people who’ve contacted us have pointed out British interference in Ireland’s laws is not welcome, and that we have had quite enough of that interference historically,” she said.
“BPAS has an ideology which supports abortion on demand until birth – something that is repugnant to most Irish people,” she concluded.
