The LIfe Institute has challenged the Irish Centre for Human Rights in NUI Galway to include a pro-life speaker in its line up for a conference to be held next Thursday dealing with abortion. Although the conference is entitled “Global and Local Perspectives on Abortion”, it excludes the majority local pro-life perspective, and only features pro-abortion speakers. The conference is co-hosted by the Irish Family Planning Association, but the Life Institute has asked whether the centre, or the conference receives taxpayer funding.

They wrote:

“We note that the Irish Centre for Human Rights is hosting a conference on abortion on Thursday November 5th, but that it has entirely excluded any speaker(s) who would protect the human right-to-life of every unborn child.

Can you explain why a centre which claims to be “one of the world’s premier university-based institutions for the study and promotion of human rights” would entirely ignore the rights of the unborn child to the point where it would deny these children any representation or advocacy? It is easy to set oneself up as a human rights advocate: it is harder to actually give meaning to the term by including those members of the human family who are most vulnerable and most at risk from the abortion industry. Then again representatives of the abortion industry, who never let human rights interfere with their profit margin, are co-hosting your conference. You are also ignoring the perspective of the majority of the Irish people – the “locals” referred to in your conference title – who oppose abortion.

It is deeply ironic that your next conference, to be held 19-20 November – is entitled “Forgotten Rights, Forgotten Concepts”, since you have so clearly forgotten the first right – the right to life, from which all other rights stem.

We would like to know:

1. Does the Irish Centre for Human Rights receive any taxpayer funding from any State department, from NUI, or from any other source.
2. Who is funding this conference – Global and local perspectives on abortion – and who made the decision to exclude any pro-life speakers.

Perhaps you could, even at this late stage, show your openness to a real commitment to human rights by including a speaker who believes that all human life should be afforded protection.”