Minister Ciaran Cannon tells of the heart-breaking pain of losing their child during pregnancy.

His daughter was tragically stillborn with just 7 weeks left in the pregnancy.

In an article, published over the weekend in the Sunday Independent, Minister Ciaran Cannon has written of the pain and heartbreak he went through when his unborn daughter was stillborn with just 7 weeks left in the pregnancy, and how the thought of the lost potential of his daughter will cause him to save the 8th.

Ciaran Cannon and his wife had to go through one of the most horrific ordeals any parent could ever go through, an ordeal we can only wish never to have happen to ourselves and our own families, but in that tragedy Ciaran has found a reaffirmation of the fact that the unborn are alive, they are human, and they deserve to be protected and nurtured rather than cast away. Ciaran will vote to save the 8th, and in doing so will give to others what was sadly taken from himself and his own wife, the ability to see potential turn into reality, and to watch our children grow, free of any pressure from doctors or society to simply ‘abort and try again’ if those children are not exactly what we want.

And this tragedy shows us the weakness of the pro-abortion position – we hear them say, again and again, that the unborn are not human yet, that they’re ‘just a clump of cells’, but would they ever dream of going up to a friend who had suffered a stillbirth and tell her that? No, of course not. They, as would any decent person, would comfort that woman on the loss of her child. They would mourn with their friend, and they would recognise the common humanity of the unborn child. But that humanity was there even when they did not recognise it. Humanity is not sometimes that is only granted when a child is wanted, nor magically granted only at the minute it’s born, it’s intrinsic. The pro-abortion should know this, but sometimes it’s only in moments of tragedy that we can clearly see how things are.

As Ciaran says “When I walk into my local polling station to vote in the referendum how can I forget the lost potential of my daughter? In removing the right of thousands of Irish children every year to reach their own potential, to live long and fulfilling lives, I would be dishonouring her memory and I just can’t do that.”

The full story, in Ciaran’s own words, can be found here -https://medium.com/@ciarancannon/today-is-her-birthday-b784ea02f14a