Finding the poverty of Irish numbers supporting Youth Defence in my initial post of this sort was quite amusing. But as I worked my way through the Life Institute, Ireland Stand Up, David Quinn and Ronan Mullen, seeing each one dominated by either Americans, men, or American men, using my unique method of pulling Twitter stats began to become more of a chore.
So, this will be my last check of Twitter geography of anti abortion groups in Ireland. My reasoning is simple - I'm out of material. The only two left are the Life Institute (stats given to the excellent Red Lemonader, looking forward to reading her take) and the Pro Life Campaign, which ran last night.
Why have I saved this till last? There are a number of factors, none particularly deserving. First: they never annoyed me. They still haven't, for the record: I don't count holding a different view to me as offensive and I haven't taken the time to read much of their material. This did not completely remove my curiosity of course, but other groups seemed almost eager to jostle to the front of my queue through loud misinformation and aggression.
Secondly, @ProLifeCampaign have quite a few followers. 5,410 at time of draft if not time of publishing. There are some manual steps to this process, mainly around verifying the country based on the user's supplied location, and large numbers are a bit of a pain. (On a tangent if you describe your location as 'Mordor' I curse you and your children to the third and fourth generation. Not very helpful.)
My final reason? Given they thankfully seem to eschew the tactics of Youth Defence / Life Institute and so on I honestly thought their followers would be Irish. This was a terrible reason for me to leave them so long - while my commentary is unlikely to leave my personal views disguised I do like to feel the stats I present are of interest to all sides. @ProudProChoice has benefited from this free service, as has @ChoiceIreland, and I've made several open offers to those opposed to abortion to run the appropriate scripts. (Do ask.) I've published stats on @ChooseLife2012 - they're mainly Irish and 45% female, earning them a best in class position for those opposed to abortion in Ireland.
So, with an all too familiar sense of deja vu, a stiff coffee and a mental draft of how I could possibly write a two page endorsement of Pro Life Campaign's commitment to Irish followers I opened the spreadsheet.
