The Life Institute has criticised the government’s children’s strategy as “hollow”, given that it “ignores the 10,000 unborn children whose lives were ended before birth in 2023.”
Spokeswoman Sandra Parda said the Report on early childhood, as set out in the Whole of Government Strategy for Babies, Young Children and their Families (2019-2028), was “almost silent on the first nine months of a child’s life.”
In his foreword to the Report, Taoiseach Simon Harris says that the Strategy embodies Government’s “ambition and underscores the Government’s recognition of the fundamental importance of the first five years in determining children’s life chances.”
In a separate foreword Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman outlines how he is “extremely proud of the progress we made in 2023 and the many milestones that we have reached.”
According to the Minister this includes ensuring that “babies and young children have healthy childhoods, “starting in the prenatal period.”
However, Life Institute said that “the entire Strategy is overshadowed by an immense and wilful silence on the deaths of over 10,000 unborn children in 2023 alone,”:
“What we have here is a clear indication that the unborn child is indeed being erased within the very policies that proclaim with smug and hypocritical satisfaction that they are actually child-centred,” the spokesperson said.
“For example; the Strategy has the unmitigated nerve to claim that “all babies’ and young children’s early years will be valued as a critical and distinct period which should be enjoyed,” and that “families will be assisted and enabled to nurture babies and young children and support their development, with additional support for those who need it.”
“There is precisely zero evidence that this Government has applied or is willing to apply those principles to the unborn child or to women and families who may be experiencing challenges around pregnancy, the LI spokesperson said.”
“What we have here is an exercise in deflection that is totally silent on the loss of tens of thousands of human beings at the prenatal stage of their growth; a stage that the Minister claims he wants to support toward full health.”
“We have always said that families and babies need targeted and wrap-around supports, but a Government Strategy on babies that is too frightened to even acknowledge the blight of abortion has no credibility whatsoever,” Ms Parda said.
Last weekend, the All Ireland Rally for Life saw thousands march through Dublin city centre calling for an urgent task force to tackle what it said was Ireland’s “spiralling ” abortion rate.