Call for abortion poll to be abandoned

The Alliance for a No Vote has called for the Government to abandon a "dangerous and misguided" referendum on abortion. It said the debate was ignoring the central issue of crisis pregnancies and how to prevent them.

The group also criticised the Catholic Church's decision last week to support the referendum. Labour MEP, Mr Proinsias de Rossa, said it was a political decision when all its previous decisions on the abortion debate had been based purely on theological grounds.

At a press conference in Dublin to outline a legal opinion on the proposed referendum legislation, Prof Ivana Bacik, co-convenor of Abortion Reform, identified 20 legal flaws in the Bill. She described it as an unprecedented, inappropriate and cumbersome measure.

A woman's right to life would be less than the right to life of the unborn child and the criminal offence of abortion with a sentence of 12 years would become "super-constitutional". The only other offence dealt with in this way was treason.

Prof Walter Prendiville, a gynaecologist, said the referendum did not deal with the central issue of preventing unwanted pregnancies. He could not understand why the Government had not addressed this issue.

Prof Prendiville, associate professor of gynaecology at the Royal Colelge of Surgeons, said there were life-threatening diseases such as Eisenmenger's syndrome or anencephaly, where the physical risk to life might not be identified until late in the pregnancy, when a termination earlier would be much safer. He believed the issue should stay in the medical domain rather than being a "political football".

It was an attempt to put a "very complicated and complex issue into a black-and-white choice" and would not help the medical profession.

Mr Tony O'Brien, chief executive of the Irish Family Planning Association, said that "because of the high incidence of unprotected casual sex in the Christmas season, over the next few days there will be a disproportionately high number of unwanted pregnancies and a disproportionately high number of abortions".

The referendum was a "duplicitous and hypocritical proposal which says it's perfectly fine to have an abortion so long as it's not in Ireland".

Mr de Rossa said the rights of women living in Ireland were reduced as a result of the Bill, which he described as a "grossly hypocritical pretence to deal with the issue of abortion".

The criminal offence provision meant that if a doctor intervened to save a woman's life they would face 12 years imprisonment but if they did not intervene and the woman died, that would not be an offence.

The Government is expected to decide in January whether to set a date the referendum but the Alliance appealed against it.

Mr O'Brien said the Tanaiste, Ms Harney knew there would be no consensus on the issue and he called on the Coalition to "come clean" on its plans for a referendum.