ALMOST a year after the referendum that repealed the 8th amendment, The Iona Institute has launched a new billboard campaign called, ‘Still One of Us’.
The campaign is based on a similar billboard campaign we launched last year called ‘One of Us’. Like the campaign of 12 months ago, it shows an unborn child at 11 weeks. The new law allows abortion for any reason up to 12 weeks and after that on broadly the same grounds as in Britain.
Commenting on the launch, Professor Patricia Casey said: “The campaign is a reminder that despite the result of last May, the unborn child is still one of us and no matter what the current legal situation might say, the child in the womb is still a human being and has the same right to life as the rest of us.”
She continued: “We are showing the unborn baby at 11 weeks because that is within the time period when a perfectly healthy foetus of a perfectly healthy mother can be aborted, effectively on-demand. It is also very apparent even at this early stage of the pregnancy that we are dealing with a human being”.
Professor Casey said: “The heavy defeat of one year ago cannot mean that the pro-life movement ceases to advocate for the right-to-life of the unborn. No vote, no matter how big, has any effect on the basic fact that all human beings have a right to life even if our law no longer recognises this.”
She concluded: “When the 8th amendment was passed by two-to-one in 1983, the pro-choice movement did not go away. Nor will the pro-life movement. We must continue to remind the public of the basic humanity on the unborn child until there is a change in culture and law that benefits mothers and unborn children alike”.
