THE EUROPEAN Court of Human Rights will today rule on whether Ireland’s restrictions on abortion violate women’s human rights.
The ruling, which could have significant implications for Irish abortion law, is based on a case taken by three women in Ireland who say their health was put at risk by being forced to go abroad for abortions. The court will issue its ruling at a public sitting of the court’s grand chamber this morning, rather than a more common written judgment. This, legal observers say, reflects the gravity of the judgment. If the court rules the women’s rights were breached, it is likely the Government would be under pressure to legislate for abortion under the circumstances of the 1992 “X” case, where the Supreme Court ruled terminating a pregnancy is lawful where the life of a mother is at risk.
The Strasbourg-based court, which is separate from the EU, adjudicates on human rights issues among all 47 member states of the Council of Europe.
As a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights – now incorporated into Irish law – the Government is obliged to remedy any breaches of the convention. The identities of the women – known as A, B and C – are confidential.
One of the women, a former alcoholic whose four children were in care, feared her pregnancy would prevent her getting her children back and went to a money lender to finance the abortion in England; another – a Lithuanian national – became pregnant while undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer and feared for her health and that of her child; a third who took the morning-after pill was told by doctors the drug had failed and she ran the risk of an ectopic pregnancy, where the foetus develops outside the womb.
At a hearing last year, lawyers argued restrictions in Ireland made having an abortion abroad expensive, complicated and traumatic. In particular, they argued restrictions stigmatised and humiliated them and risked damaging their health and, in one applicant’s case, her life.
The Government, however, robustly defended the State’s positions and argued that Ireland’s abortion laws were based on “profound moral values deeply embedded in Irish society”. Attorney General Paul Gallagher argued that the European Convention on Human Rights had consistently recognised the traditions of different countries regarding the rights of unborn children.