Decisions on abortion are exclusively a matter for EU member- states, including Ireland, the MEP Mr Pat Cox said yesterday following a debate on a report on women's health in the European Parliament. It called for legalised abortion in certain circumstances.
Mr Cox said the report had the "status of an opinion" and had absolutely no force in law. "Whatever the result is, in terms of European law, it is exclusively a matter for Ireland or any other member-state to make its own choices on sensitive questions such as abortion."
He said the vote on the report had "nothing whatsoever" to do with pressure being applied on Ireland under the Amsterdam Treaty. The report, presented to Parliament on International Women's Day, said member-states should introduce induced abortion in certain circumstances, "at least in cases of forced pregnancy and rape, and where the health or life of the woman is endangered on the principle that it must be the woman herself who takes the final decision". It also called for proper psychological and social support to be available to these women.
Mr Cox said votes such as this served the cause of anti-European sceptics and his group in the Parliament, the Liberals, saw this as "an additional reason for voting against the offending paragraphs" in the report. However Green MEP Ms Patricia McKenna, a member of the Parliament's Women's Rights Committee, said she did not anticipate problems in Ireland with how the report addressed abortion as it had been carefully worded "with a compromise between right and left in the Parliament, catering for very different views on abortion". It took into account, she said, the legal situation in Ireland following the Supreme Court judgment in the X case.
The Labour MEP, Ms Bernie Malone, criticised the delay in the publication of the Green Paper on abortion by the Government.
"The Irish Government promised a Green Paper on this subject almost two years ago. There is still no sign of it. Can we continue to let a significant number of Irish women, over 5,000 last year, travel overseas to have abortions?" asked Ms Malone.
According to the report, prepared by Finnish Green MEP Mrs Heidi Hautala, the Commission had dealt "only summarily" with the health consequences of the differences in the various member-states on abortion and the various measures which could be taken to reduce them through sex education programmes. The report also urged the promotion of "unrestricted availability of contraceptives and counselling aimed at younger people". Ms Malone said the report estimated that one in 25 women under the age of 35 suffered from an eating disorder, and that one in 10 cases of anorexia proved fatal. "I urge the Minister for Health and Children to address the issue and to focus on the provision of monies for research, specialist programmes and support for voluntary organisations working in this field," she said .
Fine Gael MEP Mr Alan Gillis (Leinster) said the report had found that Irish women have the second-lowest life expectancy among all member-states, second only to Danish women. He said it was a sad indictment of the State's health system.