YES: Ivana Baciksays fear and hypocrisy must give way to compassion and empathy: the argument for legalising abortion in Ireland is long overdue
The issue may have temporarily disappeared from the political agenda, but it remains of immense significance every day to many people in Ireland. We know that more than 5,000 women a year make the journey to England for abortion; about 100,000 Irish women have had abortions in the last 30 years.
Yet in a country obsessed with legal debates about abortion, in which five referendums have been held on the subject in 20 years, the real experiences of women with crisis pregnancies have never been expressed publicly.
This culture of silence is not surprising. Fear and hypocrisy have long dominated discussions about abortion, with fearful legislators preferring to leave hard decisions on hard cases to the courts. The result is a situation rooted in hypocrisy.
Everybody knows that planeloads of women travel to England for terminations every year, but everybody pretends that abortion does not exist in Ireland.
In fact, Irish abortion rates are comparable to those in any European country. Yet our abortion law is the most restrictive in Europe. Abortion remains a criminal offence under Victorian legislation, dating from 1861, with maximum penalties of life imprisonment for women who have abortions and for those who assist them.
In 1983, a constitutional amendment made the right to life of the unborn equal to that of the pregnant woman. Since then, a series of cases has been taken against women's clinics and students; a series of referendums has been held; litigation has occurred before the European courts.
In the 1992 X case, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion is legal where a pregnancy poses a real and substantial risk to a woman's life, a judgment followed in the 1997 C case, which also concerned a young girl who had been raped and was pregnant and suicidal as a result.
The X case remains law despite a failed attempt by the government to reverse it through referendum in 2002.
During the campaign around that referendum, a woman named Deirdre de Barra wrote to this newspaper explaining that she had been pregnant with a baby diagnosed with a severe abnormality, incompatible with life.
She spoke of her anger at an uncaring law that had forced her to travel to England to terminate her pregnancy, and had not allowed her to access the medical treatment required in this country.
Despite an acknowledgment by the masters of the maternity hospitals at the time that abortion should be legal in such cases, the law remains unchanged.
In May of this year, a similar case came before the High Court, as a result of which a young woman, known as Miss D, was permitted to travel to England for a termination. Again, she was denied the treatment she needed in Ireland.
Her case brought into sharp focus once more the lack of compassion in our law towards women with a crisis pregnancy, even those women who will have to give birth to a dead baby if they continue their pregnancy to term.
It is now clear that the law is out of touch with changing attitudes. In June, the campaign group Safe and Legal in Ireland published the findings of an opinion poll conducted by TNS/mrbi.
When asked in which circumstances abortion should be legally available in Ireland, the vast majority of those questioned (82 per cent) agreed that it should be available when the pregnancy seriously endangers the woman's life. Three-quarters agreed it should be legal when the foetus cannot survive outside the womb (as in Miss D's case); and 69 per cent where pregnancy results from rape, or where the pregnant woman's life is at risk due to a threat of suicide.
This opinion poll, together with others conducted in recent years, show that the values of compassion and empathy have taken over from the culture of fear and hypocrisy.
Legal change is now necessary to reflect this. As a first step, legislation should be enacted under the X case to specify the conditions under which life-saving abortions may be carried out here.
Clearly, that alone would not resolve the real issue. Legislating for X would not address the needs of women like Miss D, or the needs of the many thousands of others who make the journey abroad each year in crisis.
As we enter the term of a new Dáil, we should insist that our elected representatives take responsibility for legislating in a fair and reasonable way for the rights of our citizens.
We must look to European standards in reproductive healthcare, and investigate ways of changing the law in a compassionate and sensible way, so that the real needs of women in crisis pregnancy are addressed.
• Ivana Bacikis Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology, Trinity College Dublin
online: join the debate @ www.ireland.com/head2head