Age-old problem that won't go away

Induced abortion is as old as human history and was commonplace in Ireland for centuries. Prohibition arrived in Ireland under a British law: the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which made "performing, attempting and/or assisting in an abortion" an offence punishable by "penal servitude for life". This Act was one of a number of laws passed around this time restricting the rights of women to education and ownership of property and their sexual behaviour.

Until then, both British and American law reflected a moral neutrality towards abortion, arising from a 13th century belief concerning "quickening". This held that until such time as the foetus was capable of separate existence (fourth or fifth month) it was acceptable to interfere with the course of a pregnancy.

The quickening doctrine was adhered to by the Catholic Church, which preached that the foetus did not become "ensouled" until quickening. In 1869, Pius IX dropped the reference to "ensouled foetus", and in 1917 excommunication for the "crime" of abortion was extended to include the pregnant woman as well as abortionists.

Until the middle of the 20th century, Irish women used a variety of unreliable and dangerous methods to induce abortion, including physical (beatings, jumping off sheds, carrying heavy loads), insertion of assorted instruments (coathangers, knitting needles, iron hooks), poisonous drugs and herbal concoctions, quantities of gin and/or quinine, Jeyes Fluid and other disinfectants. Newspapers regularly carried reports on illegal abortions, and infanticide was common all over the country.

Between the second World War and 1967, illegal abortion was the main cause of maternal death in Britain and Ireland. In the late 1960s, women's groups emerged worldwide with a new strength of purpose, leading to the passing in Britain of the 1967 Abortion Act. In Ireland, the fight centred on contraception, and abortion remained almost a taboo subject until 1983, when anti-abortion activists began their campaign to make abortion not only illegal, but unconstitutional.

The passing of the 1983 constitutional amendment led to the X Case nine years later, when a 14-year-old rape victim was prevented by a High Court injunction from travelling to England for an abortion until an appeal to the Supreme Court overturned the verdict. During the judgment of the X-Case, the Supreme Court delivered a sharp rebuke to politicians: "The failure by the legislature to enact the appropriate legislation is no longer just unfortunate, it is inexcusable. What are pregnant women to do? What are the parents of a pregnant girl under age to do? What are doctors to do?"

The government's answer to those searing questions was the 1995 Regulation of Information Act, which stipulates that information on abortion services can be given only within the context of counselling.