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Sunday, December 19, 2010

After the European Court of Human Right’s decision in
A B and C, where do we stand?

Dr. Joseph McCarroll PhD
Chairperson of the Pro Life Campaign

Our national office has been taking calls since yesterday’s European Court of Human Rights ruling in A, B and C v Ireland asking what it means, where do we go from here, and what steps do we need to be taking right now to progress the pro-life cause.

It’s important to make a couple of things clear – which may not have been clear from yesterday’s reporting of the decision.

Ireland does not have to legalise abortion because of the ruling

In the considered view of Professor William Binchy, the most important point is that the judgment does not require Ireland to introduce legislation authorising abortion.   On the contrary, it fully respects the entitlement of the Irish people to determine legal policy on protecting the lives of unborn children.

Article 40.3.3 says the State should pass laws protecting the unborn’s right to life.  We need to recall how we got here. In 1983, the Irish People voted to insert into the Irish Constitution Article 40.3.3 that said the State acknowledged the right to life of the unborn child as equal to the right to life of the mother. It also said the State ‘guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

Politicians didn’t bring in such laws, fearing pro-life voters at the polls and the pro-abortion voices in the media

But the Oireachtas since then did not bring in such laws - the politicians were unwilling to bring them forward. They were aware that a consistent majority among the general public wanted clear abortion laws so any politician taking an opposite view ran the risk of paying a high penalty in votes lost at the ballot box.

On the other hand, the politicians were also aware that the dominant voices in the media were largely pro-abortion, so politicians taking a pro-life view ran the risk of paying a high price on the box in the corner of the living room.

18 years on, the medical assumptions underpinning the Supreme Court’s decision in the X case are outdated.   It was left to the Courts to address the issue in the X case in 1992. In Professor Binchy’s words, “It is crucial to note that the judges in the X case heard no medical evidence.”   The evidence over the past 18 years contradicts the medical assumptions of the X case decision.[1]
  
In the years since the ruling, the evidence has steadily built up confirming the opposite of what the judges had assumed - women who have abortions are more likely to commit suicide than women who continue with their pregnancy.[2]

The Supreme Court’s X decision has to be revisited and revised.  To clear the way for the kind of laws protecting the unborn that Article 40.3.3 calls for, the Supreme Court’s medically out-of-date judgment of eighteen years ago has to be revisited and revised. Again, to quote Professor Binchy’s words,

“The Irish people must now make a choice. If they were to choose to endorse the Supreme Court decision in X, this would involve legalising abortion contrary to existing medical practice and the best evidence of medical research. If on the other hand, the Irish people choose to endorse the current medical practice, they will be ensuring the continuation of Ireland’s world-renowned safety record for mothers and babies during pregnancy.

Any revisiting of the X case decision would need to take on board the evidence from these new studies that abortion involves significant risks for some women. Based on the current state of medical evidence alone, it would be irresponsible simply to introduce legislation along the lines of the X ruling as it would put at risk the mother’s life as well as taking the baby’s”

So where does the pro-life community go from here?

Quite simply, we go to the politicians and let them know we are pro-life and that, in the forthcoming General Election, we will only be voting for Parties and Candidates with a clear public commitment that they will not introduce or support legislation providing for abortion to be carried out here.

Starting with … the Pro-Life Campaign’s initiative to send postcards to your local politicians.  Click here to send yours.

The political reality is this – the ECHR ruling is as was widely expected, and it was in anticipation of just such a ruling that the Pro Life Campaign started rolling out its political initiative to build up pressure on local politicians using postcards stating our voting intentions as pro-life voters.

Now that the decision is out and the election only months away, we need to redouble our efforts to see that everyone we know who is pro-life sends these postcards to their own local politicians.

This is how real political change comes about – by showing one local politician after another that there is a palpable dividend for them in giving you a public commitment to support your demand, and a political cost to failing to do so.

The Pro Life Campaign sees the A, B and C ruling as an opportunity for the pro-life community to bring home to their local politicians the breadth of pro-life commitment in their constituency. Coming only months before a General Election, it is an opportunity not to be missed.

To see Professor William Binchy’s Statement click here

To read and send our online postcard to your local politicians, click here

To donate to the Pro Life Campaign – we really need your support now more than ever, please click here



[1] [David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood and Joseph M. Boden, "Abortion and mental health disorders: evidence from a 30-year longitudinal study," British Journal of Psychiatry (2008), 2008, pp. 444-451. ‘Position Statement on Women’s Mental Health in Relation to Induced Abortion, Royal College of Psychiatrists’, UK (2008)]

[2] [Mika Gissler, Cynthia Berg, Marie Helene Bouvier-Colle and Pierre Buekens, ‘Injury deaths, suicides and homicides associated with pregnancy, in Finland, European Journal of Public Health 2005 15 (5): 459-463]

European Court of Human Rights finding in the case of A B and C v. Ireland must respect human life at all stages of development.




Remarks by Professor William Binchy at the 
Pro Life Campaign Press Conference 
Buswells Hotel, Dublin 2
12.30pm, 16th December 2010

Today’s judgment from the European Court of Human Rights will require detailed analysis over coming days but some clear points emerge immediately. The most important is that the judgment does not require Ireland to introduce legislation authorising abortion. On the contrary, it fully respects the entitlement of the Irish people to determine legal policy on protecting the lives of unborn children. The Irish people must now make a choice. If they were to choose to endorse the Supreme Court decision in X, this would involve legalising abortion contrary to existing medical practice and the best evidence of medical research. If on the other hand, the Irish people choose to endorse the current medical practice, they will be ensuring the continuation of Ireland’s world renowned safety record for mothers and babies during pregnancy. 


The evidence over the past 18 years contradicts the medical assumptions of the X case decision. [1] [2] It is crucial to note that the judges in the X case heard no medical evidence. In the years since the ruling, the evidence has steadily built up confirming the opposite of what the judges had assumed - women who have abortions are more likely to commit suicide than women who continue with their pregnancy. [3]

Any revisiting of the X case decision would need to take on board the evidence from these new studies that abortion involves significant risks for some women.  Based on the current state of medical evidence alone, it would be irresponsible simply to introduce legislation along the lines of the X ruling as it would put at risk the mother’s life as well as taking the baby’s.


The suggestion that because of this country’s pro-life ethos pregnant women are denied necessary medical treatments is simply not true. In fact,
Ireland is a world leader in safety for pregnant mothers. The latest UN report on the safety of mothers during pregnancy found, of all 172 countries for which estimates are given, Ireland leads the world when it comes to safety for pregnant women.[4]

Women are safer in Ireland when pregnant than in countries like Britain and Holland, which permit abortion on demand. Given our record in maternal care, the question has to be asked, why are some people proposing to blur the time-honoured distinction between necessary medical treatments in pregnancy and the deliberate targeting of the baby in the womb with the aim of ending its life?

The most recent opinion poll findings show that 70% of the public support constitutional protection for the unborn,13% oppose it and 16% don’t know or have no opinion.[5]

What marks this finding out from polls showing support for abortion is the distinction it makes between necessary medical treatments in pregnancy and induced abortion, where the aim of the procedure is to target the life of the unborn child.

By all means, let us debate the abortion issue openly, honestly and with all the facts in front of us. But equally, we cannot shy away from the implications of what legal abortion would involve and the brutal reality of abortion, legal up to birth, in countries like Britain.

What’s at stake in this debate is the value of life, and the sad experience is that once laws permitting abortion are introduced, they diminish the society’s respect for the inherent value of every human life, born or unborn.

What we need now is a calm, respectful national discussion, in which the latest medical and scientific evidence is fully considered leading to a solution at a Constitutional level, which will ensure the full protection of all human beings, mothers and unborn children, on the basis of respect for their equal dignity and worth.

ENDS



[1] David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood and Joseph M. Boden, "Abortion and mental health disorders: evidence from a 30-year longitudinal study," The British Journal of Psychiatry (2008), 2008, pp. 444-451
[2] Position Statement on Women’s Mental Health in Relation to Induced Abortion, Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK (2008)
[3] The European Journal of Public Health 2005 15 (5): 459-463, Injury deaths, suicides and homicides associated with pregnancy,
   in Finland by Mika Gissler, Cynthia Berg, Marie Helene Bouvier-Colle and Pierre Buekens.
[4] Report on Maternal Mortality by World Health Organisation, UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Bank, (2007, 2010)
[5] Millward Brown Lansdowne survey on a quota controlled sample of 950 people aged 18+ between 27th January and 6th February 2010.