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
