Scottish Catholic Observer

The final hour of the Lenten pro-life vigil took placed on Saturday March 19 outside Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow and attracted more than 113 participants who stood silent.

The next day even more people gathered in George Square to formally close the event, with security provided by the Knights of St Columba. Among the speakers there were John Deighan, director for SPUC Scotland that helped to organise the vigil. Mr Deighan said that all those who had taken part in the vigil had helped demonstrate the ‘deception that abortion depends on.’

“We hear this constant reputation about the women’s right to choose,” he said. “But we know from women who have had an abortion that they feel abandoned; that they don’t have support; that their hands are forced and they are really coerced towards it.”

He went on to say that ‘abortion really is the large scale abuse of women’ and we are denying women ‘the support they should have.’

Rose Doherty, Scottish campaign organiser of the vigil, also addressed those gathered and was cheered by all involved. Veteran pro-life activist Robert Graham paid tribute to her, saying 40 Days for Life was the ‘most significant development’ he’s seen in 40 years in the pro-life movement.

Mary Duggan, one of the midwives who took her fight to avoid being forced to participate in abortions by Greater Glasgow and Clyde Heath board to the Supreme Court, also spoke at the rally. She said that programmes such as 40 days for Life were changing attitudes among medical professionals. “People don’t enter the medical profession to end lives,” she said. “And increasingly medical staff don’t want to be involved in that.”

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Pic: Paul McSherry

—This story ran in full in the March 25 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.