On 28 September, Dublin’s Mansion House was illuminated green for ‘International Safe Abortion Day’. Belfast City Hall was scheduled to follow.
The National Women’s Council coordinated the Dublin illumination as part of a Europe-wide campaign promoting abortion as a reproductive right. In Belfast, an attempt to reverse the decision to illuminate City Hall was defeated by 36 votes to 18, although the illumination was subsequently halted due to a legal challenge.
For those of us who are pro-life, abortion is not simply another healthcare procedure over which reasonable people happen to disagree. We believe that every human life, including unborn life, possesses an inherent dignity which should be protected.
That makes the use of civic buildings for such a campaign particularly troubling. Belfast City Hall already has enough contested symbolism without adding abortion campaigning to the façade.
Mansion House and Belfast City Hall do not belong to abortion campaigners nor to pro-life campaigners. They should be shared civic spaces, representing populations sharply divided on questions of life, morality and law.
There is something especially jarring about seeing the Mansion House, inseparably associated with Irish political history and the First Dáil, incorporated into an international campaign celebrating abortion access.
Pro-life citizens are routinely told that abortion is a difficult and deeply personal subject. If that is so, public authorities should understand why illuminating common civic buildings in its celebration cannot plausibly be treated as politically or morally neutral.
A civic building can represent everyone or it can be used to promote one side of a profound moral dispute.
It cannot easily do both.
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