The media and four Roman Catholic archbishops have their say – for now.
Irish government to legalize life-saving abortion
Yahoo news – Ireland’s government pledged Tuesday to pass a law soon that will allow women to receive abortions if continued pregnancy threatens their lives — including from their own threats to commit suicide if denied one.
The announcement comes after decades of inaction on abortion in Ireland, and just weeks after the predominantly Catholic country faced international criticism over the death of an Indian woman hospitalized in Ireland with an imminent miscarriage.
Health Minister James Reilly said parliamentary hearings on the issue would begin next month, lawmakers would receive a bill by Easter and they would be expected to vote on it by the summer. This would mark the first time that Irish lawmakers have ever voted on abortion, arguably the most divisive issue in a country whose constitution bans the practice.
The government of Prime Minister Enda Kenny promised a swift response after the Oct. 28 death of 31-year-old dentist Savita Halappanavar. Authorities did not make public the woman’s death at the time, but her widower accused doctors at University Hospital Galway of refusing to terminate the pregnancy because the doomed 17-week-old fetus still had a heartbeat.
Halappanavar spent three days in increasing pain and illness before the fetus died and its remains were surgically removed. She then died from blood poisoning and organ failure three days after that. Her husband has refused to cooperate with two official Irish investigations into her death and instead is planning to sue Ireland in the European Court of Human Rights.
For two decades, successive Irish governments have resisted passing any law in support of a 1992 Supreme Court judgment that abortion should be legalized in Ireland in exceptional cases where pregnancy endangers a woman’s life. Ireland’s highest court ruled that a 14-year-old girl who had been raped by a neighbor should be provided an abortion because she was making credible threats to kill herself if denied one.
In 1992 and 2002, governments asked voters to approve constitutional amendments that would permit abortions only in medically essential circumstances, and exclude suicide threats as valid grounds. Voters rejected the proposals on both occasions.
Catholic conservatives oppose the court’s suicide-threat justification, arguing it could be used to expand access to abortion beyond relatively rare cases where a pregnancy endangers a woman’s life.
Reilly said the government would ensure “that the issue of suicide is not abused as it has been perceived to be” in other countries.
Kenny, a Catholic conservative himself who rose to power in March 2011, has fiercely criticized the Vatican over its involvement in the chronic cover-up of child sexual abuse by church officials in Ireland. He said all lawmakers in his party must vote in support of the government’s eventual abortion bill or risk expulsion.
The Catholic Church’s four archbishops in Ireland issued a joint statement urging the government to exclude any threat of suicide as grounds for granting abortion — and called on lawmakers to resist Kenny’s insistence on party discipline.
The government normally has an unassailable majority in parliament, but any abortion vote could threaten it. About a dozen lawmakers in Kenny’s party already say they oppose voting in favor of any access to abortion. This means Kenny could require support from left-wing opposition lawmakers to ensure passage.
The archbishops said the Supreme Court judgment was flawed, and passing a law in support of that ruling “would be both tragic and unnecessary.”
“The lives of untold numbers of unborn children in this state now depend on the choices that will be made by our public representatives,” the archbishops wrote.
They said the government should afford lawmakers “complete respect for the freedom of conscience. No one has the right to force or coerce someone to act against their conscience.”
Dr. Berry Kiely, spokesman for an Irish anti-abortion pressure group called the Pro Life Campaign, said the suicide clause would be exploited by pregnant women and represented a choice to kill an unborn baby, not a medical requirement to save a woman’s life.
“A woman who says she’s suicidal because of being pregnant with this baby, what she’s saying is she doesn’t want a living baby at the end of this procedure,” Kiely said. “You’re actually, in that situation, proposing to directly and intentionally ensure the death of her baby.”
The Supreme Court judgment did legally empower Irish hospitals to begin providing such abortions, but doctors in practice have often refused to provide them anyway, citing the risk of facing lawsuits or criminal charges because of lawmakers’ refusal to provide any definitive legislation on the matter.
Two years ago, Ireland lost a lawsuit in the European Court of Human Rights brought by three Irish women who said their health had been needlessly jeopardized by the lack of any explicit, clear Irish abortion laws.
The court agreed with litigants that Ireland failed to provide clear access to information on when abortions could be performed lawfully in the country. It also ruled that one woman, a cancer survivor in remission, should have received clear medical advice in Ireland as to whether her pregnancy posed a severe risk to her health. She ended up researching her medical circumstances on the Internet, then traveling to England for an abortion, but suffered severe medical complications because of the delay involved.
Approximately 4,000 women travel from the Republic of Ireland annually for abortions in England, where the practice was legalized in 1967.
http://news.yahoo.com/irish-government-legalize-life-saving-abortion-225211758.html
Ireland is gearing up for a war between church and state over abortion
Tim Stanley, Telegraph – The Irish government has announced that it’s going to push through legislation to legalise abortion. It will repeal existing legislation that makes an abortion a criminal offense and introduce regulations that say a doctor can perform an abortion if a woman’s life is regarded as being “at risk” – including if she’s “suicidal”. The semantics of “suicidal” are suspicious. This could turn in to the old “risk to the woman’s health” formula that many countries use and is vague enough to allow abortion on demand. Whatever the result, this is a watershed moment for Ireland. Its political establishment has distanced itself from the country’s Catholic heritage and from the pro-life tradition. Taoiseach Enda Kenny fancies himself as a new Luther.
A few immediate observations. First, the catalyst for this reform was the story of Savita Halappanavar, a woman who went to hospital suffering from a miscarriage, was denied a termination, and later died. Pro-abortion campaigners have used her case to claim that Ireland’s laws kill – that the refusal of an abortion on the grounds of Catholic chauvinism led directly to her passing. But the facts of the case are not that certain. Ireland does theoretically allow abortion under certain cases when the mother’s life is at risk, and it’s not even clear that a termination would have saved Savita’s life.
Worryingly, pro-abortion activists had access to the details of her case before they were released by the press. It smacks of politicising a tragedy for the sake of change – and it seems to have worked.
Bishops: X Case law would lead to ‘direct, intentional killing of unborn children’
The four Catholic Archbishops of Ireland have said that the government’s decision to press ahead with legislation for abortion in line with the X Case “should be of the utmost concern to all”.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/1219/1224327999157.html
http://www.thejournal.ie/bishops-abortion-legislation-x-case-722099-Dec2012/
Abortion move ‘must be free vote’
BBC – an extensive report – Members of the Irish parliament must be given a “free vote” in any move to change the Republic’s abortion laws, the Bishop of Dromore has said.
Dr John McAreavey made the remarks as Ireland’s four Catholic Archbishops criticised the government on the issue.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20780136
Bishop fears abortion on demand
Leo O’Reilly, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kilmore – a diocese covering most of Co Cavan, as well as parts of Leitrim, Fermanagh, Sligo and Meath – said supporters of the government’s proposals, announced yesterday, saw the liberalisation of Ireland’s abortion regime as “the first stage”.
“That is what has happened elsewhere, and there is no doubt that will happen there,” O’Reilly told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.
http://www.thejournal.ie/bishop-x-case-abortion-on-demand-722179-Dec2012/
Abortion nettle grasped at last but pain may lie ahead
Irish Times opinion – Twenty years after the Supreme Court delivered its judgment in the X case, a government has finally grasped the nettle and decided on a scheme that will give effect to the ruling.
The Cabinet decided yesterday on a combination of legislation and regulations to provide clarity on when a termination of a pregnancy is permissible. The scheme will allow abortions to be carried out only in accordance with the X case judgment: that is, where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother, as distinct from to her health.
While the Government statement was silent on the matter, the grounds for a legal termination will include the risk of suicide or self-destruction. The legislative scheme will not, however, incorporate, or make legal, abortion in other in extremis situations, such as rape, sexual abuse, or rare fatal foetal abnormalities.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/1219/1224327996962.html
Is Ireland’s abortion U-turn based on a mistake?
Christina Odone in The Telegraph – It took the death of a young mother-to-be to rip up the Irish abortion law.
Savita Halappanavar was pregnant and suffering a miscarriage. In hospital, she allegedly repeatedly asked for an abortion, but was refused. When she died, the huge public outcry that ensued has persuaded Ireland’s government to review their law, under which abortion is a criminal act. Henceforth, when a mother’s life is at stake, termination will be legal.
I’m a Catholic but I believe abortion has to be legal. Yes, it is a sin; and yes, there are women who use it as contraception. But the risk of having a long roll call of tragic deaths like Savita’s is too cruel to contemplate. Like divorce, abortion should be available, but reserved as a last-resort nuclear option – and when the mother’s life is in danger is precisely such a scenario.
The Irish U-turn over Savita’s death worries me, though. Is this the right result based on the wrong premise? As I have written here before, listening to the radio interview with the journalist who broke the story, we’re left with the distinct impression that she is not sure that Savita or her husband actually asked for, and were refused, a termination. Nor does she explain what condition the mother-to-be was in when she was admitted to hospital: in other words, was she healthy and her death was preventable by an abortion, or was she suffering from some other condition, which eventually killed her?