Hundreds take part in anti-abortion rally in Dublin

By Claudia Savage, Press Association

The “debate is not over” on pregnancy termination, an anti-abortion demonstration has been told.

Hundreds of people marched from St Stephen’s Green in Dublin to Molesworth Street to call for a “clear policy shift away from promoting abortion”.

March For Life demonstrators carried a banner reading “pro-woman, pro-baby, pro-life”, and signs displaying “abortion betrays women” and “real debate not groupthink”.

The protest comes as Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns has signalled she will bring a bill that would enact recommendations of a 2023 report into existing abortion legislation, which came into effect after Ireland voted to liberalise its laws on terminations in a referendum in 2018.

Cairns said the bill would provide clarity on terminations for medical reasons, including fatal foetal abnormalities, remove an existing three-day waiting period between GP consultations prior to a termination and end the “criminalisation of doctors”.

Independent Ireland TD Ken O Flynn told the crowd on Monday, “this debate is not over, and we will not be silenced”.

“We are being told that this debate is over, we are told that there is nothing left for us to discuss, and yet we see efforts from the left to remove the safeguards, to expand access, to go further and further,” he said.

He added: “We need to change the course that we’re on, because if we’re serious about being pro-life, then we must be serious about being pro-woman.

“That means support, real support, because it is not enough just to say ‘I choose life’ if life does not feel like an option.”

Pro-Life Campaign spokeswoman Caroline Simons and Councillor Ellen Troy also addressed the crowd.

HSE statistics show there were 10,852 pregnancy terminations in Ireland in 2045, the vast majority (10,711) occurring in the first 12 weeks.