Achievements

Youth Defence have kept abortion out of Ireland.

Joseph Scheidler, Pro Life Action Network, March 2006


  • Succeeded in keeping Ireland Abortion-Free
  • Maintaining a pro-life majority in Ireland by informing a huge portion of the population as to the reality of abortion through our educational work
  • Giving a voice to this majority, through public demonstrations and organised campaigns
  • Keeping the next generation pro-life by educating, training and activating young people and bringing them to the pro-life movement
  • Preparing and publishing a water-tight, non-compromisory wording for a pro-life referendum
  • Attracting more than 5,000 members to Youth Defence within a nationwide branch-structure
  • Organising hugely successful National Pro-Life Information Roadshows, reaching at least 22 towns every year
  • Bringing thousands together every year for the All-Ireland Rally for Life; a shared initiative with our sister organisation Precious Life
  • Ensuring, through target picketing and focused lobbying, that abortion legislation has not been enacted
  • Organising Ireland's first nationwide pro-life advertising campaigns, which included bus advertising, billboards, radio ads and booklets.
  • Providing counselling outside abortion referral agencies on a regular basis
  • Holding conferences, media courses and training weekends to produce articulate and confident pro-life activists
  • Organising public meetings to educate those who have not yet heard the pro-life message
  • Establishing an effective pro-life presence in colleges, and giving multimedia presentations and talks in secondary schools
  • Designing and publishing leaflets, cards, booklets, posters, stickers and other materials for distribution
  • Contributing comprehensive, well-researched submissions to the Green and White Paper Committees on Abortion and further reports to similar committees since then
  • Defending the right to life of the unborn child in the infamous 'C' case
  • Designed Ireland’s first pro-life website and now maintaining six others, including educational websites in seven different languages
  • Assisting the foundation of Precious Life in the North of Ireland and Youth Defence Australia, who are putting abortion back on the agenda in their own countries
  • Training young pro-lifers from organisations right across the world
  • Founding Youth Defence International to form an international movement of young people dedicated to re-establishing a pro-life culture
Fighting for life