Precious Life celebrate success of European Pro-Life Petition Campaign
Precious Life are celebrating the outstanding success of the ONE OF US Campaign - the europe-wide pro-life petition which has collected 1,891,406 signatures in support of protecting human life from conception. Precious Life co-ordinated the Campaign in Northern Ireland.
I congratulate all Precious Life’s dedicated volunteers for helping make the ONE OF US Campaign an outstanding success, with a European total of 1,891,406 petition signatures. The Campaign has surpassed all expectations because of our volunteer’s hard work and the sacrifices they made.
Precious Life unite with the European organisers of the Initiative to warmly thank all the individuals and national organisations that organised remarkable and creative campaigns across Europe.
The aim was to gain 1.2 million petition signatures by 1st November 2013, requesting the European Parliament to recognise that life begins at conception. The second goal of the initiative was to stop organisations like Marie Stopes International receiving millions of pounds of European funds.
Now that the petition has gained over 1.8 million signatures, the European Parliament will be required to schedule a debate on the issue of protecting life from conception and stop funding pro-abortion organisations.
The ONE OF US campaign was a ‘European Citizens’ Initiative’ (ECI) - a newly established legal instrument which allows citizens across the EU to propose legislation. This pro-life initiative the first and the largest success of other ECIs. The purpose of the initiative was to reaffirm that the human embryo is “One of Us”, that she/he shares our humanity.
Precious Life embarked on an intensive promotional campaign to gain petition signatures across Northern Ireland. We officially launched the ONE OF US Campaign at the Northern Ireland Assembly, where it was endorsed by the All Party Pro-Life Group. Politicians from across the political and religious divide came together to sign the petition.
Our dedicated volunteers collected signatures all across the Northern Ireland; outside churches, at pro-life events, and on the streets. Thousands of promotional postcards that we designed and produced, were distributed. We also used the popular social networking site - Facebook - to promote the Campaign.
Although Northern Ireland is politically part of the UK, it is geographically part of the island of Ireland, so we were unable to collect signatures on mainland Britain.
Precious Life’s aim was to collect a minimum of 3640 signatures - which is 0.2% of the Northern Ireland population. We based this percentage on the minimum number of signatures required by the Republic of Ireland - 9000 signatures - which is 0.2% of the population there.
We not only reached, but far exceeded, our quota very quickly so we continued working diligently to collect petition signatures in Northern Ireland, to add to the UK total.
We estimate that Precious Life collected 18,000 signatures in Northern Ireland in just over 2 months. The people of the six counties can be proud knowing that we massively boosted the number of signatures gathered in the whole of the UK.
The ONE OF US campaign let the pro-life majority in Northern Ireland make their voices heard in defence of life. The title ‘One of Us’ says it all, and Precious Life will continue working to ensure each human life is respected and protected.