National Pro-Life Roadshows
Youth Defence's annual Pro-Life Roadshow
Youth Defence's annual Pro-Life Roadshow is a major national event, which reaches unparalleled levels of public engagement.
Every summer our pro-life volunteers set off for towns and cities throughout Ireland with a succinct and powerful message:
Abortion kills babies and harms women.
Up to a million people have been directly engaged with the pro-life message by our Roadshow volunteers. That personal contact is one of the most powerful tools in keeping public opinion pro-life, and the Roadshow brings that public interaction - and a wealth of top-quality pro-life materials - to the four corners of Ireland.
Our van is literally crammed with Pro-life Information Session boards, pro-life posters, leaflets, booklets, DVDs, other educational stuff, and possibly a few volunteers squeezed into the 18 inches between all this gear and the roof.
Each day we hold a pro-life street session and distribute pro-life literature with special emphasis on the Life Book - a booklet that incorporates the most popular Youth Defence leaflets and has a mid-section in full colour detailing the development of the child in the womb.
We've also used a digi-van as part of this pro-life tour, so that the public can see amazing pro-life videos such as Project Truth while they're at our information stand, or just walking by.
The Roadshow ensures that a huge number of people receive essential pro-life information. Our objective is always to come home empty-handed. (It also means that the return journey is far more comfortable.)
For many ordinary people, in different parts of the country, the Roadshow is their only source of pro-life information. In fact, without the yearly Youth Defence Roadshow, it's highly likely that a considerable section of the Irish people would never have seen or read the truth about abortion.
The effect of the Roadshow reverberates long after the van returns to Dublin. One young mother cancelled her abortion after seeing a DVD obtained by a friend months before at a Roadshow stop in a small Midlands town. In Cork, a mother who was booked in for an abortion stopped in her tracks to look at the Life Boards, and changed her mind on the spot. In Cavan a beaming young woman with a gurgly baby in a buggy said last year's Roadshow had saved her baby's life. There are many such stories.
The Roadshow allows people with a pro-life conviction to interact on a one-to-one basis with tens of thousands of Irish people. With up to 50 young pro-life volunteers taking part on any given day, the Roadshow is the best craic you can have doing the most important work on earth.