LEVITTOWN, Pa. (CNS) – The practice of killing the patient as a way to eliminate a disease is one way to describe aborting unborn babies who have been diagnosed with disabilities.

“It seems like the targeted elimination of an entire segment of the population,” even including infants who would be born with relatively minor problems, according to Niamh Ui Bhriain, an organizer of a July 4 rally in Dublin that drew between 25,000 and 30,000 participants and had as its theme “Every Life Matters.”

Ui Bhriain explained in a telephone interview with Catholic News Service that abortion is constitutionally prohibited in Ireland except in cases where continuing the pregnancy would threaten the mother’s life.

But she said that groups such as Amnesty International, the United Nations and Planned Parenthood, all of which portray access to abortion as a human right, are bringing more and more pressure to eliminate that protection.

Abortion has long been legal in nearby Britain, where even late-term abortion is considered a right if the infant has been diagnosed with a disability. An undetermined number of Irish women travel to the U.K. to abort their babies every year.