Madam, – In the Seanad debates of the original proposed 1983 amendment to the Constitution, senator Mary Robinson, as she then was, stated, “The basic flaw in this amendment is that it is so uncertain in its scope and so potentially contradictory in its meaning and so potentially damaging to existing practices in the area of family planning and medical treatment . . .”
The plight of the three women now bringing their cases to the European Court of Human Rights are case studies on how flawed the law on the “right to life of the unborn”, abortion law and reproductive rights is in this country, and how right Ms Robinson was all those years ago.
The Constitution mandates the Oireachtas to introduce laws to regulate how the competing right to life of the unborn and the mother are to be reconciled: they have abjectly failed in their constitutional duty in this regard. The only law in the area is what comes from the courts, which have to decide the law on the basis of the facts before them. They do not have the power to develop the broader policy context, and the law on abortion in this country has been decided on the basis of the stories of three young women: Miss X, Miss C and Miss D.
It is an appalling situation that three more women have to ask the European Court of Human Rights to do that which the Irish parliament has refused to do for nearly three decades. The time has come for a rational, informed, mature and charitable debate on the question of how Irish law should resolve its “abortion question”. – Yours, etc,