Family & Life Delegation to Washington DC St Patrick's Week 2024

08.05.2024

Family & Life sent a delegation to Washington DC for St. Patrick’s week.  The group included politicians and former interns from our Leadership Academy. Among the many engagements, the delegation attended a coalition meeting of various different prolife and pro-family organisations which was hosted by the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI).

CPI provides a platform whereby citizen leaders, scholars, and activists who are committed to conservative values and principles can be connected with the conservative movement, and with Congress, congressional staff, and organisation leaders in Washington, D.C.  

A brainstorming session was conducted. Among those present were Focus on the Family who are well renowned for their work defending the unborn and promoting family values. They also work from a Protestant Christian perspective, as they collaborate with many protestant politicians, Churches and faith groups, along with others who share many of their values. A lot of ideas were exchanged and they were eager to collaborate and work closer together on shared values into the future. 

Another major engagement was with the Heritage Foundation who we have a long relationship with. Much was learned particularly in terms of messaging and rhetoric. The Heritage team were delighted to meet our team and expressed interest in coming to Ireland.

Catholic Vote is an organisation we first encountered in 2015 and they met with our team and a number of politicians and talked about the work they do with church leaders and people of faith. They explained the importance the church and faith groups have in defending mothers and their children, both born and unborn. New ideas were explored on how Ireland could benefit from their experience. Catholic Vote is a community of patriotic Americans who believe that the timeless truths of the Catholic faith are good for America. That is why they make it their mission to inspire every Catholic in America to live out the truths of our faith in public life.

Our team met with pro-life members of Congress and recruited a number of them to help lobby Irish politicians on the issue of prayerful witness at abortion clinics and maintaining restrictions in Ireland. One of those was long-time friend of Family & Life, Chris Smith (Chris was our Keynote Speaker at our Dublin conference in 1996!!) Member of the House of Representatives. He suggested lobbying for better maternity leave and was appalled by the anti woman approach by the Irish Government who are so ready to promote abortion but will not assist women who want to keep their child but feel pressured financially. 

He outlined the importance of Irish pro life politicians across party lines starting a Pro Life Caucus. In the USA the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus works to eliminate taxpayer funding for abortion and preserve pro-life health care providers' rights of conscience. There is both a Senate Pro-life Caucus, led by Senator Cyndy Hyde-Smith, who met with Family & Life and a House Pro-Life Caucus, led by Representative Chris Smith. 

Throughout the week we engaged with the major pro-life NGOs and secured their interest in seeing how they can help us defend the unborn in Ireland.  The pro-life politicians from North and South of Ireland we very encouraged and motivated by the meetings they attended an we have no doubt that much fruit will flow from this work.

We have a job to fight to maintain the life saving three day waiting period and lobby our Irish government to bring in other measures to reduce the out of control abortion numbers. F&L’s week in DC gave us many strategic and lobbying ideas and support to better mount a challenge. 

For almost 30 years we have forged friendships and alliances with pro-life friends in the US and we cannot overstate the importance your annual support for this work in America during St Patrick’s week is.  This year was so successful that we intend to put a big effort into the composition of the 2025 delegation.  If we have the funds, we will bring a larger delegation of politicians to meet and engage with their US counterparts, to swap ideas, to get motivated and to get moving back home on doing much more in Leinster House to save babies from abortion.