In the wake of the overwhelming passage of the marriage equality referendum it is understandable that such evidence of an openness to liberal reform would ensure the return to the public agenda of the abortion debate, and specifically the issue of the repeal of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Labour reiterated its intention to include the issue in its manifesto while the Taoiseach insisted that it would not be a matter for this Government.
The language of the discussion has also been significantly transformed in the last couple of days with the publication by Amnesty International of a major report, She is not a criminal: The Impact of Ireland's abortion law, which documents the post-Savita situation here and makes a strong case for repeal as a fundamental issue of human rights. "If Ireland wants to comply with international law," the group's secretary general Salil Shetty, argued in The Irish Times, "Ireland must change its law. It must stop making women criminals, stop the censorship of information about abortion, and, at a bare minimum, start ensuring access to abortion in cases of rape, incest, for both fatal and severe foetal impairment or where a woman's or girl's health is at risk."
But while the case for the latter reforms is strong, and there is clear evidence from polls in this paper of public support for such changes, Amnesty may be stretching the legal argument too far. A legal obligation? Although it rightly points to repeated urgings – non-binding – from UN committees on human rights, torture, women, or children, that suggest Ireland's law may be in breach of human rights standards, the right to an abortion, for example, when a woman's life is threatened remains an implied right not yet explicitly upheld by an international court or agreed by covenant. That is not to say it does not exist, or will not exist, in international law, just that it is not yet a recognised. Ireland should perhaps change its law, but must?