By C.J. Williams, Social Media Coordinator 

Ireland feels different. 

Do I mean wetter, greener, the difference in culture and clime? No. It feels different in a country that does not legally consent to child murder. 

Ireland does not murder nearly 4,000 babies a day.

When I walked from Belfast to Dublin, I felt it seep in slowly -- the sensation of safety, of -- for lack of a better word -- blessedness. It was like an interior green feeling. It was like rain on a dusty day. I saw it in the way my fellow young people interacted; in the way families related. Something that I was used to missing was no longer missing. 

And I told that to Rose, the brave mum of Youth Defence's Eoghan de Faoite, as she joined us just South of Dundalk to walk the 20 miles that day. 

Rain skittered over ours hoods, and tumbled off and way towards the coast, leaving us in sun, and dappled shadows - and since we're walking side-roads now, the traffic drove by in patches, not in a single continuous roar.

I survived a holocuast. One third of my peers simply don't live and breathe beside me in the States. But their deaths have left holes. Their murders have left pockets of inexpressible and unexpressed grief. Their absence has impoverished my country.

So I told Rose -- and then tried to explain the difference I felt in her nation. She understood, intellectually. But I don't believe she could actually conceive the weight of living in a nation that kills thousands of its children a day . 

Because in Ireland, they don't. 

Just as a young man can imagine the horror of war, but can't feel the bloody-lead-like weight of being on a battlefield with his friend, bleeding out beside him, so someone who doesn't live in a country in which people and law have consented to sacrifice their children daily, and call it "Woman's Empowerment", can wholly feel that horror of that abortion mandate.

And do you know what the flip-side is?  I think in the States, we may be so used to it, we have forgotten the weight of that hidden holocaust of abortion ourselves.

We are accustomed to it. 

Babies dies by the thousands, and it affects our lives, our families - no, it has torn our culture to shreds. Millions of women are shattered inside, mothers of dead babies. Millions of children are siblings of dead sisters, brothers. Millions of men have paid for the killing of their children, or are the powerless fathers of children murdered.

Do you feel the weight?

But Ireland is blessed.   

I thank God for Ireland. I thanked God as I finished the 100 mile prayer walk in Dublin for this country that is a visible and living testament to the protection of human life. I thanked God I had the chance to experience the freedom of truly being abortion-free, and bring that experience back with me to the States. 

Yet Ireland now, two months later, slips on the brink of the same Hell Roe tumbled America into in 1973. The people of Ireland have just had their largest #rally4life in history -- over 60,000 people crowded Dublin to demand protection for their children and their women.

But beyond reason, the Dail and Enda Kenny have set a course for Hell -- come Hell or high water. 

Pray with me.  Pray with and for our Irish brothers and sisters. Today marks the beginning of a novena to keep Ireland Abortion Free, in continuation of the prayer Rev. Pat Mahoney, the walking team, and I, began in May.

“As Ireland faces the dreadful prospect of legalized abortion under the pro-abortion Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, prayer and faith are essential to stop this," said Fr. Neil Xavier O'Donoghue, Ph.D., Prefect of Studies, at Redemptoris Mater House of Formation in the Archdiocese of Armagh, speaking on the novena, "The worldwide novena being promoted by Pro-Life supporters and groups across the United States is, therefore, very welcome."

Join Survivors in praying this novena from July 8-15 to keep Ireland abortion free.  We survived a holocaust. As Survivors, we are called to expose what we survived, and protect our country, and our world, from the heinous offence against humanity: abortion.