Sir, – Your editorial (June 11th) suggested that our position on the Government's human rights obligations regarding abortion "may be stretching the legal argument too far". The many recommendations from and decisions by UN human rights treaty bodies on abortion are not "urgings". The UN human rights system was founded on the basis that a treaty would set out a very general set of broadly stated rights. Their precise content and meaning – and the state's consequent obligations – would then be interpreted by the bodies established and elected by states under those treaties. This is what allows human rights law to develop.
Neither can you say these bodies “suggest Ireland’s law may be in breach of human rights standards”. They have given clear determinations that Ireland’s law is in breach of human rights standards. States are required to have regard to these bodies’ decisions on other states too.
In a case brought against Peru by a young woman whose pregnancy involved fatal foetal impairment, the UN Human Rights Committee said the denial of abortion was a violation of the right to be free from torture and other ill-treatment. Not might be – was. So abortion laws like Ireland’s indisputably violate numerous human rights, including the rights to life, health, privacy, to be free from discrimination and from torture and other ill-treatment.
And you cannot say “the right to an abortion, for example, when a woman’s life is threatened remains an implied right”, just because it is not written expressly into the treaty being interpreted. (Many rights, like the right to truth for victims of grave human rights violations, are not expressly stated in the UN’s treaties.) Or because no court made this determination – this is a system which has no courts.
The very reason for the treaties stating rights in wide terms, and establishing bodies to interpret them in light of emerging norms and realities, was so they could evolve. This has proven particularly important for women’s rights, since gender and women’s issues were not fully reflected in the original human rights treaties.
And wouldn’t it be ideal if the UN human rights system included a legally binding court system? But how many states would have signed up for that? Instead, Ireland and other states crafted a UN human rights system of evolving real rights and real obligations, based on states’ implementing the treaty bodies’ interpretations domestically.
One way states undertook to do this was to have their domestic legal order human rights compliant.
You conclude by asking, “Ireland should perhaps change its law, but must?” We say emphatically, “Yes, it must”. It must because it created this system and ratified these treaties promising its people their rights would be respected, protected and fulfilled. It must because Ireland’s women and girls have waited long enough for their human rights, lives and health to be respected. – Yours, etc,
COLM O’GORMAN,
Executive Director,
Amnesty International
Ireland,
48 Fleet Street, Dublin 2.
Sir, – Following Amnesty’s call to repeal the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 and replace it with laws that ensure safe and legal access to abortion, at a minimum, in cases of rape, incest, risk to health or severe and fatal foetal impairment (among other changes), maybe we need to address the fact that allowing abortion in that situation, will not open the floodgates of abortion but will offer women and their families the choice to make a dire situation a tiny bit less awful, ie by having the procedure in Ireland.
As a mother to a baby who died neonatally following a diagnosis at a 20-week scan, the option of “travelling” was suggested to me, researched and decided against. If the procedure was available in Ireland, I would have made the same decision. That was my choice. Having been through it, I know for sure, that women and their families deserve to have that choice available to them. They may choose, like I did, to continue with their pregnancy, and many will. Others will make the difficult decision to end that pregnancy, and they deserve to be able to do that with the support of their medical team, family and friends at home. Either way, the loss of your baby is a tragedy. But it is a tragedy that is more bearable at home. – Yours, etc,
ROSEMARY WARD,
Waterford.
Sir, – For any of the groups Wilson Joyce suggests (June 12th) support abortion, an equal number can be found opposing it. The claim that women are the experts on their own bodies means what? The implication being that women alone should have an opinion in the topic? But here again there are many women prepared to speak about the grave lifelong negative consequences of following the abortion route. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK DAVEY,
Shankill, Dublin 18.