There are men who stand on the street corner opposite the National Maternity Hospital performatively praying for what their metaphysics tells them are babies’ souls. For them, personhood begins at conception and a fertilised embryo is as morally significant a life as a fully fledged human. If it weren’t so prevalent in populations that overlap with ours, this would be more obvious for what it is – a strange opinion.

If your interest is the welfare of the vulnerable – as I’m sure these men say theirs is – there are many clearer cases of need. I’m not one of these utilitarians who think we need to direct our philanthropic attention only to the most urgent cases, but there is a middle ground between effective altruism and what is really a very niche fixation on the welfare of blastocysts, embryos and foetuses.

As I‘ve swerved around these men on my way to appointments in Holles Street, I’ve wondered whether they also pray at Tuam or Bessborough, or the many sites across Ireland where spiritual and physical harms to very real children were committed.

I think of Matthew 6:6 and wonder why they’re there are all: “[W]hen you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” This discretion is contrasted with “hypocrites” who love praying on, you guessed it, “street corners”. Why, one wonders, do these men focus their biblically contraindicated prayer where they do? Is it because of a welfare concern, or because they dislike women exercising agency over their sexual and reproductive........

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