Ireland Stand Up, the catholic lay initiative that was set up to oppose the closure of the Irish Vatican embassy has been in the news a quite a bit lately. The organisation has involved itself in the abortion debate claiming it has sent DVDs to members of the Dáil and Seanad.

The group sent copies of the classic Christmas film ‘It’s a Wonderful life’ to TDs and senators as part of its anti choice lobbying campaign. They claim to have sent copies of the DVD to 190 of the 266 TDs and senators. What – ‘It’s a Wonderful life’ has to do with women’s bodies is a mystery to me.

Ireland stand up, apart from sending DVDs without any relevance to the abortion debate, cannot be trusted and are not credible. Some of these anti-choice groups are prone to gross exaggeration, as can be seen by the Life Institutes claims they made 56,000 phone calls to Fine Gael TDs, which did not happen.

Last year, an article claimed the Ireland Stand Up initiative sent 96,000 postcards to An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny.

Paul Moloney wondered could this be possibly be true. He contacted the Office of an Taoiseach and received the following reply.

Yes, 1,500 postcards not the 96,000 as was claimed by the Ireland Stand up article. What is it with these anti-choice groups and the need to exaggerate support for their causes ?

Now if you suffer from terrible cynicism like I do, then you must be thinking they have to over state their support because they have little or no support relative to the general population and are trying to bully our elected representatives.