BY Daniel Harkins | April 29 | 
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Pro-life debate heating up in Edinburgh and Glasgow
Pro-life campaigners took to the streets of Edinburgh last week as debate around the future of abortion in Scotland and the freedom to campaign against it heated up.
This year’s annual pro-life chain in the capital is the last to be held before the Scottish Parliament gets new powers on abortion as part of the Scotland Act introduced after the Scottish Independence referendum. A group of 142 people, the highest turnout in years, stood in witness along Lothian Road in Edinburgh last weekend, while in Glasgow a renewed battle over free speech took place as students at Strathclyde University continued their fight to overturn a ban on funding for a pro-life group.
The 1967 Abortion Act came into effect on April 27, 1968, and the anniversary is marked each year in Scotland by campaigners for life. The Edinburgh pro-life chain (right) is one of the most visible of such events in Scotland, taking place on a busy road through Edinburgh city centre.
The pro-life activists began their witness last Saturday with a Rosary in Sacred Heart Church led by Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh Archdiocese (below). Around 60 people attended, and their numbers grew as the chain was formed in the city centre.
Paul Atkin from the Edinburgh branch of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children Scotland (SPUC Scotland) was one of the more than 100 people who took part in the chain in Edinburgh.
“I really like the pro-life chain,” he said. “It’s just a simple, dignified witness; the still, small voice of calm for unborn children and their mothers, and just sort of saying to people, you know, this is happening and we really need to change what we are doing as a society.”
Mr Atkin said that in his experience the pro-life chain is hugely influential. “Abortion works well when it is not talked about,” he said. “As you see with the students at Strathclyde University, so often the approach is to shut people up, don’t talk about it, because to be honest abortion doesn’t stand up to reasoned argument and discussion. So success for the pro-life movement is getting the issue out in the open and telling people what in their heart of hearts they know anyway.”
Strathclyde University pro-life students, led by Laura Seggie and Sean Deighan recently lost a move to overturn a ban on pro-life groups receiving financial support from the University of Strathclyde Students’ Association (USSA). When the issue was raised by the pro-life students last year, student executive member Kyle Henry said that ‘what the issue boils down to is should we be able to have pro-life societies on campus.’
“The pro-life students at Strathclyde University have taken the appropriate steps to overturn a policy that excluded pro-life students from affiliating a pro-life society to the Student Union,” John Deighan (above right), CEO of SPUC Scotland said. “They have been urging fellow students to support freedom of speech and hopefully attention to the issue will permit reason to prevail.
Democracy cannot work if uniform thinking is imposed on everyone. A university is the place above all where we should be able to see a proper and healthy exchange of ideas.”
PICS: CATRIONA ATKIN
—This story ran in full in the April 29 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.
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