Sir, – I must respond to Rev Patrick G Burke and Pádraig McCarthy, both of whom are incorrect in their interpretation of international human rights law (April 16th).
For the record, women and girls do have a human right to access abortion, at a minimum when they are pregnant as a result of rape or incest, their life or health is a risk, or there is a diagnosis of a fatal or severe foetal impairment. This is beyond question.
Nor is it a controversial or divisive assertion – our recent independent Red C national poll found that 80 per cent of people in Ireland know that women have a human right to access abortion in these circumstances.
I find it hard to believe that Rev Burke is serious when he says that Amnesty International’s position on abortion is founded on “personal and ideological reasons”. This is untrue and absurd. Ideology does not feature in our position, as we did not create the UN’s human rights treaties or oversight mechanisms. States including Ireland did. And these UN treaty bodies are very clear that women and girls do have this right.
Mr McCarthy states that “not one international human rights treaty that has been signed by Ireland establishes a right to abortion”. This is also incorrect.
Women have a right to access healthcare, to privacy and to freedom from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. They should not be denied information about their medical needs, nor be discriminated against because of their gender.
Ireland’s Constitution and abortion laws cause serious and ongoing human rights violations for women and girls on all of these grounds. The rights set out in the international treaties are expressed in broad terms, leaving it to expert treaty bodies (also created and elected by states like Ireland) to interpret their precise meaning on an evolving basis.
In the past two years, Ireland’s brutal abortion laws have been condemned by three of these UN treaty bodies – the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, and the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
It can be difficult for people when their view of the world is not shared by most others (and 87 per cent of people in Ireland want expanded access to abortion). But to seek to deny the very existence of women’s rights cannot go unchallenged.
It is long past time to bring Ireland’s archaic and inhumane abortion law into line with its international human rights obligations. And it just so happens that the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland agree. – Yours, etc,
COLM O’GORMAN,
Amnesty International
Ireland,
Seán MacBride House,
48 Fleet Street,
Dublin 2.