History: 2007

March for Life in Washington

YD members (not the same ones) again (so for the first time actually) travelled to Washington DC to the March for Life. Apart from meeting and greeting old buddies, plans were made to bring the pro-life movie Bella to Irish universities.

Labour Loonies

Having heard that Labour Youth and some other cloak and daggerish types were organising a campaign to rejuvenate efforts to legalise abortion in Ireland, YD members thought they would drop in to see what the pro-aborts were up to.

Not wanting to be recognised, members of Youth Defence bought fake beards and shades and managed to root out the password into the “public” meeting. Mouthing the top-secret code “you fascist pig” at the door gained entry into the meeting where the central theme for discussion went along the lines of: ‘abortion-at-all-costs-make-it-mandatory-dammit’.

However it became apparent that mandatory attendance would have been a better policy as the room was populated mainly by a committee table and a few of the usual abortion crazed headers. In fact there wasn’t even a live attendant at the door which explains how the entry came off so smoothly.

Whipping on this motley crew of far-left extremists was Ivana Bacik. But not even her views, which seemed to have been left out in the sun too long, could match the stuff coming from the floor, some of which would make humorous entries into The Loony Doctor’s book of Humorous Anecdotes. While most of the time was given over to lamenting the effectiveness of those devils in Youth Defence, the plans discussed at the meeting did show how despicable these people could be though. Among the saner of the proposals tabled were: find a doctor who would perform an abortion in Ireland, and/or to use an asylum seeker who could not travel to campaign for the right to have abortions performed in this jurisdiction.If it weren’t for their obvious lack of cop on, one would despair.

State-funded murder

The Health Service Executive (HSE) was once again found using taxpayers' monies to fund the murder of Irish babies abroad. It was confirmed in December that a girl, under the age of 17, in the care of the State, was taken out of the country for an abortion and that a court order was secured to kill the baby.This is not the first time the health boards have facilitated the procurement of abortions abroad. Two teenagers were brought to Britain between the 2002 referendum and March 2003. The HSE also paid for a girl to travel for an abortion in 2005. It begs the question of how young girls who are supposedly in the “care” of the HSE are repeatedly finding themselves in crisis pregnancy situations, and in particular, becoming pregnant through rape. The word cover up comes to mind.

Th’ Dvd

After messing about with picture boards and cellotape and scissors for decades YD grabbed hold of the digital world and made a brand-new promotional DVD. This smash-hit 'Keeping Ireland Abortion Free,' which shows the activities and projects of YD is 21 minutes of hot action and great cinematography. Replacing the woolly jumpers, nineties soundtrack and docs of the previous video, is this smashing, informative and action-packed DVD with some super cool sounds. A rollercoaster ride which will have you on the edge of your seat, it contains the wow factor with up close interviews with fashionistas and trendsetters and smart graphics which make you feel you are right there at the centre of it all..

Well it’s worth a look anyway.

“this is the must see dvd of the year” Solas

"Cinematic brilliance” Irish Family Press

Not in my name

Precious Life (PL), unveiled the “NOT IN MY NAME” Campaign at Stormont on Thursday 1 March. PL enlisted prominent candidates from Assembly Election to make abortion a key election issue. PL’s Campaign focused on rejecting the Department of Health guidelines on abortion that were issued on January 07.

Baby X

Baby X was commemorated on March 10 at the Spire on O’Connell Street, Dublin. Centred on a table draped with black materials lay a tiny white coffin surrounded by red roses, while black flags were held high by young volunteers. ‘She’s a child, not a choice’ was the thought for the day.

After several hours of demonstration, including a life chain depicting an unborn child at each of the nine months of its development in O’Connell Street, a long procession, led by coffin bearers, proceeded the short distance to the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA), where the tiny white casket, representing not just Baby X but all children whose lives are so cruelly ended, was laid at the door of this grim referral business.

The D Case: May 2007

As expected, the D case was seized upon by abortion lobbyists as a vehicle upon which to demand abortion in Ireland. The details were as follows: A young girl in the care of the Health Service Executive (HSE) became pregnant. It transpired that her child had anencephaly – where part of the brain fails to develop - and the HSE wanted to bring her to England to abort the child.

Something smelled rotten about the whole affair. For instance, in the past few years the HSE never sought permission from anyone to bring children in their care to England’s abortion mills before so why now? The HSE applied to the District Court and the case was referred to

The High Court which soon became crammed with different representatives speaking for each party. All present were layers representing the HSE, the Girl, and the government/people. The government/people had the Attorney General on their side not once but twice. One deputy of the AG’s office was watchful of the interest of the right to travel and spoke ably for the cause. The other was there to represent the rights of the unborn and made a good impression of a deaf mute.

The case became very public with Justice Mc Kechnie even criticising the HSE for “trying to turn this into another X-Case.” The abortion lobby started kicking and screaming about rights and the inhumanity of having a baby who was only going to live a very short time anyway and the whole thing got very public with the main focus - as ever with test cases - being abortion rights.

It transpired that the girl didn’t want to have the abortion. But she was taken aside by her handlers, in the HSE presumably, and convinced that she would not be aborting her baby, just delivering it early. The fact that the baby would then die was conveniently brushed over.

Youth Defence held several vigils in support of the baby and mother and said that the HSE was showing a disturbing contempt for the right to life of disabled persons. Justice McKechnie, in an appalling ruling, disparaged the child in the womb and gave the HSE his blessing in arranging for the baby to be killed as soon as possible.

Several questions remain unanswered: what sort of care are the HSE providing when so many troubled girls become pregnant in their care, and just who is driving the agenda to broaden “abortion-rights” in the HSE using taxpayers’ funds.

Read more on the D Case here...

Lifeability Campaign

The thrust of the abortion lobby’s argument in the D case was that the baby was disabled and was therefore somewhat less human than other “normal” babies. It would be inhuman to expect the mother to carry this child to term, or so went their argument.Sitting in the wings of this debate were mothers who had given birth to and loved children with anencephaly, as well as people with disabilities. One of these Tony de Barra, a disability rights supporter, spoke against the abortionist discrimination and formed the LifeAbility Campaign. Youth Defence supported this progressive LifeAbility crowd and helped design and distribute thousands of leaflets with them because as Tony De Barra said “The sort of thinking that would deny a baby who may have a disability the right to life is offensive and intolerable.”

Read more on Lifeability here...

The Rally for Life

Surpassing all expectations (yes, you gloomy nay-sayers that means you) the July 7 Pro-Life Rally was the largest in Ireland in 15 years. The theme was “pro-life witness” and the idea was to have fun in a celebration of life.

It was supposed to start at the Spire on O’Connell street at 1pm but as the turnout was larger than expected it didn’t get moving for another 40 minutes. When it finally did, over 5,000 people were led out to the sounds of the Stunning and DesRay and other funky summer party music. Described by the Irish Times as having a “carnival-like atmosphere” it was beautifully choreographed with bright colours splashed across the full length and width of the crowd (official banners and posters only, in full colour were held), stewards in yellow T shirts, and flocks of balloons in red and yellow. With kicking tunes blasting over the speakers all the way to the Dáil it was a two mile street party.

Then it was a couple of short rousing speeches which had the crowd whooping and cheering, and onwards to the night’s entertainments.

The evening started in the Alexander Hotel where Mass was celebrated by Bishop Olmstead and Fr Brian Mc Kevitt. The good Bish gave a few words of praise and then Alison Davis of No Less Human gave a great testimony before we all got down to dancing.

Sticking it to the indo

After nine years in the stew pot, the libel case of Niamh Nic Mhathúna v the Independent newspaper group was finally settled.

The Indo settled out of court, handed over compo and full costs, and printed an apology in their paper to Niamh for telling big fat lies about her in 1998. But why did it take so long you might ask!

It took 56 court appearances for the case to finally get listed for hearing – a common ploy by the deep-pocketed Indo which has worn out many an opponent by delaying the process and making it as painful as possible in the hope that it will probably just go away in the end. However Niamh (now Uí Bhriain since over the course of this saga she married and had three kids) wasn’t for backing down and when the day in the High Court loomed the Indo settled at the first opportunity.

So what was it all about?

In 1998 the Indo did one of their exclusive “exposés” on “the Youth Defence”. Penning this fine exercise in rhetoric, innuendo and untruths, was one Justine McCarthy who already had a boot she wanted to shove into Youth Defence from years back. It appears that spite got too firm a hold on her and rather than trust the wit of the gullible readers of the Indo to piece all the innuendo together and paint a pretty nasty, if hazy, picture against Youth Defence, she filled in the gaps with a few of her own slanderous concoctions. Standing out in black and white on the page was an allegation that Niamh Nic Mhathúna had gone to the USA to be trained by Operation Rescue who had a “worldwide notoriety in bombing abortion clinics” (McCarthy’s words, untrue on every count).

Not nice stuff to have written about you and pretty damaging for your career prospects unless you plan on becoming a free-lance terrorist. I’d imagine that most firms don’t want their employees turning up for work on Monday with a bag full of dynamite – unless of course we are talking about the Shining Path or someone like that, who would of course look upon it favourably and probably take your picture for the employee of the month award.

Anyway Niamh looked for redress through the courts, and after lots and lots of messing about finally got it. And so everyone on the side of good was happy and there was great rejoicing! A huge party ensued, all funded by the Indo. Cheers Justine!

YD Attend World Family Conference in Warsaw

Members of Youth Defence attended the World Congress of Families in Warsaw. They were amongst 3,300 delegates from around the world, who were fairly interested in the affairs of Ireland. They also liked our nice colourful reports which we send to government departments and committees and other interested people.

Roadshow

Reached 16 towns in 10 days in 2007 and included the usual activity. One of the hot topics was of course disability and the D case. The LifeAbility leaflets were a great help in explaining the issue to the average punter. Well done Tony De Barra.

Distributing information in Mullingar Town, Roadshow 2007

The North

Precious Life’s hard work, which included the collection of 120,000 petition signatures in opposition to the extension of the Westminister abortion act to the North, paid off on October 22, when a pro-life motion opposing abortion was passed in the Assembly.

As a result of PL’s campaigning – which included a cross party resolution against abortion - draft guidelines on abortion issued by the Northern Department of Health were scrapped; and a clear message was sent out to Westminster that the people of the north of Ireland are totally opposed to the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act.

Bernadette Smyth of Precious Life described the passing of the motion as an “historic day” for unborn children in Ireland.

Ultrasound: Making waves in the colleges

Youth Defence and Ultrasound, the YD sister student pro-life network, organised and promoted a college speaking tour featuring two people who had personal encounters with abortion. The tour featured five Irish colleges nationwide over a period of eight days, 12-19 November.

Visited were: Dublin City University, NUI Maynooth, University College Cork, Galway/Mayo Institute of Technology and University of Limerick. After blitzing the colleges to promote the talks with day long stalls, info and student gimmicks like wristbands and lollipops it was on to the lecture theatres for the guests’ stories.

The two speakers had very different naratives to relate. Kathy Sparks, an ex-abortion nurse who worked for years killing unborn babies in a clinic in Granite City, Illinois, told of her journey through immersion and realisation, while Rebecca Kiessling told how she finally found her birth mother years after her violent conception by rape.

Kiesling, who was conceived through the brutal violation of her mother by a serial rapist, challenged her student audience to question what the truly compassionate answer is to healing a woman who has been raped.

As there are snotty-nosed bigots on the rampage making sure free speech is not easily served in a few of our college campuses, these things don’t always run smoothly. Thankfully the voice of the despot was only heard on one campus, but still it’s one too many. In Galway we were opposed, not by students themselves, but by the college authorities and by student union leaders. Authorities at Galway/Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) tried to cancel the booking for the meeting room at the very last minute, although the room had been booked for weeks, and payment sent well in advance.

So these devious bootboys resorted to the good cop side of their plan in a pretty transparent plot to pull the wool over the eyes of the nice young people of Ultrasound. Telling Ultrasound that they would be allowed to continue with their scheduled talk if they did not promote it on the campus, they then tore down posters advertising the talk and put up signs throughout the campus declaring that the event had been cancelled.

Ultrasound, not being the kind to know when to shutup and take a licking, pressed ahead anyway and pointed out that the student’s union and their hired muscle were acting as “censors”.

That evening Ultrasound members and their guests from America were literally locked out of GMIT by burly security guards and a near-hysterical Student Union troglodyte troupe. Yet despite all that a crowd of young students followed Kathy Sparks outside into the cold college grounds in order to hear her story. The GMITSU, howling and kicking doors, then left to plan how they might censor Einstein’s paper on relativity and sabotage the Galway Races.

UCC Embryo experimentation

University College Cork (UCC), Ireland’s third largest university, held an internal consultation to decide on a policy concerning possible embryonic stem cell research at the Biology Department of the University. Youth Defence urged people to contact the college in support of a prohibition on any research at UCC that resulted in the destruction of a human embryo.

Submission to the Bio-ethics Committe

Youth Defence made a written and oral submission to the Irish Council for Bio-ethics (ICB) on the ethics of stem cell research – pointing out the obvious, that adult stem cell research which harmed no-one and produced results was the ethical option, while embryonic stem cell research which destroyed human life and offered no cures was the unethical option.

The ICB chaps were very kind to us. Tapping their pens and snapping their pencils they let us speak; and then let us out.

t seemed to YD and their posse of yes men that these chaps were only being as polite as their post required but weren’t really listening. After a quick heads together all the posse voiced the opinion that the stony silence in the room was of the impatient and irksome kind and not the avid interest we were expecting.

Then came the ICBs big blunder of asking the people to get a word in on it; with an online survey regarding stem cells. Leaving the field open to every sort of nut who only wants an ear to yak into, they also brought it to the attention of, ahem, Youth Defence who love notifying people of good causes to make submissions to. Seriously, letting as many people as possible know about the ICB online survey helped to ensure the views of the majority were heard. The resultant outcome was a substantial victory for the ethical research lobby.

Amnesty assume Pro-Abortion Policies

On 20 October in the Kingsley Hotel in Cork, the Irish branch of Amnesty International (AI) held their annual general meeting. At this meeting, a surprisingly small number od delegates met to ratify AI’s new pro-abortion policy which meant that Irish members would no longer remain neutral on this issue.

The decision caused a lot of controversy within Amnesty and resulted in many members – both high profile and rank and file - resigning in Ireland and abroad.

Opposing Euthanasia

Youth Defence were invited to an International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Toronta Canada. Spokesman, Eoghan De Faoite, represented Youth Defence at the event which was hosted by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada (EPCC).