Figures stack up for Pro Life Campaign claim

SIR, When I heard about the launch of the new initiative of the Pro Life Campaign (the LoveBoth Project) this last week, I went to their website and found the actuarial report which sets out the reasoning behind their claim that tens of thousands of people are alive today because of the Eighth Amendment.

This is a remarkable claim, but the figures stack up and I would encourage readers to read the report for themselves. The report considers the question “how many people would likely have been aborted in Ireland if the Eighth Amendment had not been inserted in 1983?”

Taking a baseline of 1994 as the likely date when abortion would have been introduced (considering various court challenges in Ireland at the time), the report compares Ireland to a number of other countries and looks at what the situation would have been if we had had their abortion rate during the 20-year period from 1994 – 2014. To give the example of Spain, if we had their abortion rate during those years, 121,000 Irish citizens would not have been born. This equates to the population of County Clare.

Some may dismiss this report, but it makes for interesting reading and is a useful addition to the abortion debate. Given the fact that it does indeed provide the backup that the LoveBoth Project promises, it acts as a sombre reminder of the effect that the introduction of abortion can have on a country. There are those who say that if we removed the Eighth Amendment, we would not know what we had lost until it was gone. I happen to agree with them.

Sincerely, June Twomey, Tullycrine, Cooraclare, Kilrush, Co. Clare.