A motion affirming the right to life of the unborn is to be put to next Friday's meeting of the Eastern Health Board. Members of the board who have called the meeting plan to press it to refuse assistance to the 13-yearold rape victim if she wants to travel to Britain for an abortion.
The High Court is expected to deliver its judgment today on the girl's case. Her parents are appealing a decision of the Children's Court last Friday to allow the girl to travel for an abortion.
Whatever decision Mr Justice Geoghegan makes in the High Court, it is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court by one or other of the parties involved. A Supreme Court hearing is likely to follow quickly, as the girl is now 13 weeks pregnant.
Friday's emergency meeting on the board's abortion policy was called by three members of the EHB. Ms Bernadette Bonar, a board member and long-time anti-abortion activist, said she hoped the meeting would agree not to help send the girl for an abortion.
Ms Bonar said that the board was in an "untenable" and "intolerable" position. It was clear that an attempt was being made to get the girl to England for an abortion and to make the State pay for it.
Not all the options had been put to the girl, she claimed. With better counselling, she could be encouraged to continue with her pregnancy.
Yesterday's four-hour High Court hearing was heard in camera. However, Mr Justice Geoghegan said he would give his judgment in public.
None of the anti-abortion activists who were present at the Children's Court hearings last week was in the Four Courts yesterday. Youth Defence is paying for the legal counsel for the parents.
The Attorney General was involved in the case for the first time yesterday after being named as a defendant by lawyers for the parents.
The National Traveller Women's Forum yesterday condemned media coverage of the case as a "form of violence against women". In a statement, it called on the media to stop making the girl's tragedy a "political football" for different viewpoints.
"The detailed descriptions of squalor and deprivation smack of journalistic voyeurism, lack human decency and are more likely to reinforce negative traveller stereotypes than contribute to improving the living circumstances of travellers."
NTWF also called on the pro-choice and anti-abortion lobbies, especially Youth Defence, to ask themselves whose interests they purported to meet. "Traveller women feel they are exploiting this young woman's tragedy to present a particular point of view about abortion."
Pro-choice demonstrators are to picket Leinster House this evening in support of their call for abortion legislation. The Pro-Choice Campaign last night blamed politicians for the current "obscene public debate" on the fate of the 13-year-old girl. The delays in the case showed up the "absurdity" of current abortion laws, it said. Anyone who was raped should have an automatic right to abortion.
Life Ireland claimed that the media had been "duped" into accepting that there was a "safe" time threshold for abortion. "Abortion kills a human being. It does not matter when it is done - six days, six weeks, 16 weeks or six months after conception."
