Almost 20 years ago, Galway mother of six Mrs Una Joyce first hit the streets to campaign against the introduction of abortion in Ireland. This week, she was back on the doorsteps again with the Pro-Life Campaign.
The big difference between the 1983 abortion referendum campaign and the current campaign for the 25th Amendment of the Constitution is the 20 years of experience and knowledge that campaigners have built up, replacing the naivety of their early days.
Galway for Life, the local branch of the Pro-Life Campaign, hit the doorsteps of the city this week in a final effort to encourage people to vote Yes in next Wednesday's referendum, with rookie students joining the ranks of more seasoned campaigners.
The coordinator of Galway For Life, Ms Eilís Grealy, said there was still a great amount of confusion in the minds of the people they were meeting in relation to the issues surrounding next week's referendum.
She explained: "A lot of people are concerned about women's health, but we are able to address these concerns because women will receive all the medical treatment they need to save their lives under the new legislation, even if it results in the death of the unborn child."
She alluded to the Finnish study published in the British Medical Journal which claimed women were six times more likely to commit suicide after abortion than if they went through with their pregnancies.
Ms Grealy said: "There are always hard cases, but the last thing that somebody who has gone through a trauma needs is to go through another traumatic experience. We have a lot of experience of working with post-abortion trauma and we feel abortion is never the answer. Both the woman and the child are victims of abortion."
