The Irish Human Rights Commission has been unable to arrive at a consensus view on the abortion amendment but a substantial number of members have criticised the associated Bill on a number of grounds.
The IHRC in a statement yesterday said a substantial number of members thought the Bill was flawed from a human rights perspective.
Several members considered the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy) Bill had added human rights protection. It cited a number of grounds on which members criticised the Bill.
The first was that the Bill immediately re-criminalised abortion except where the woman's life was in physical danger.
It provided a penalty of up to 12 years' imprisonment for carrying out an abortion, aiding, assisting or even just counselling another person to carry out an abortion.
"This would criminalise and imprison women who have abortions even in deeply traumatic circumstances such as after rape or incest," it said.
"It is arguable that to criminalise and imprison a woman who terminates her pregnancy after rape or incest is in breach of her rights and totally disproportionate," according to the IHRC statement.
The Bill's proposal would also criminalise and imprison anyone who helped women have abortions which would be disproportionate, it added.
The second ground for criticism was that the Bill excluded from the penalties for abortion a case where the ending of the unborn human life was in the reasonable opinion of a medical practitioner necessary to present a real and substantial risk of loss of the woman's life.
However, it added the words "other than by self-destruction".
"So, even if in the 'reasonable opinion' of a medical practitioner there is a 'real and substantial risk' that the expectant mother may commit suicide if the pregnancy continues, to terminate the pregnancy would constitute a criminal offence," the IHRC said.
This provision discriminated between the risks to a girl or women's life from physical or mental ill health.
The potential difficulty of certifying the risk of "self-destruction" did not justify such a discrimination.
Another ground for criticism, the statement added, was that because the "right to travel" would remain in the Constitution, many women would continue to be entitled to go abroad to have their pregnancies terminated.
"The full weight of criminal law will fall only on those who cannot afford to travel or are the least informed because they are poor or because they are different from the majority in terms of physical ability, ethnic or cultural status of because of ill health," the IHRC said.
A further discriminatory consequence of the Bill may come into play due to the regulation of an abortion at an "approved place". This could discriminate against rural women in terms of their access.
The IHRC said several members considered it was not proper for the commission to give individual views on a subject which they considered did not fall within its mandate.
In the view of these members, the measure before the people fully respected the human rights of mothers and their unborn children. It preserved the guarantee in the Constitution to protect the equal right to life of the mother and protected existing medical practice, ensuring mothers had all necessary medical care.