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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Pro Life Campaign welcomes Government's rejection of abortion recommendations


15th March 2012




The Irish Government's decision to reject recommendations made by a number of UN member states for Ireland to legislate for abortion “recognises the reality that Ireland is the safest country in the world for women to give birth” the Pro Life Campaign (PLC) has said.

Last October the Irish government appeared before the UN Human Rights Council as part of the Universal Periodic Review process and rejected calls made by six countries for Ireland to legislate for abortion.  The countries were Holland, Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, Norway and Spain.

A Government report designed as a response to a series of other recommendations made last year as part of the UN's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was presented in Geneva this morning and confirms Ireland's decision to reject calls for abortion.

Responding to the adoption of the Universal Periodic Review report, PLC spokesperson Dr Ruth Cullen welcomed the Government’s stance.

Dr Cullen said: “Calls for abortion legislation fly in the face of the United Nation's own recent research showing that Ireland, without abortion, is a world leader in terms of safety for women in pregnancy. Maternal safety in Ireland, it should be noted, is better than in the six countries which last year sought to put pressure on Ireland to introduce abortion. The latest UN study on maternal mortality, published in 2010, shows that out of 172 countries for which estimates are given, Ireland remains a world leader in safety for pregnant women.”[1]


[1] Report on Maternal Mortality, UN, UNFPA, World Health Organisation 2010

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Looking for the truth about abortion – Dr. Ruth Cullen responds to Irish Times opinion piece feedback


March 13th 2012 – The Irish Times


Sir, – Patrick Walsh (March 8th) takes issue with me (Opinion, March 5th) for not referring to the recent systematic review by the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) and its comments on mental health outcomes for women following abortion.

Mr Walsh also says that the review holds that unwanted pregnancy rather than abortion itself is linked to mental health problems. However, the review states that whether an unwanted pregnancy is continued or ends in abortion makes no difference to the mental health of the mother. This, therefore, undermines the argument that the termination of pregnancy by abortion will protect women’s mental health.

This feature of the review also completely undercuts the medical justification for abortion in countries like England where the vast majority are carried out on alleged mental health grounds. It is odd how some pro-choice groups are using the latest review as evidence to back up their case when it does nothing of the sort.

In addition, the review points to situations where abortion poses adverse outcomes for women. There is also mounting peer- reviewed evidence showing that abortion has negative consequences for women with no prior mental health problems. We need to acknowledge this honestly and factor it into the debate. – Yours, etc,

Dr RUTH CULLEN,

Pro Life Campaign,

Lower Baggot Street,

Dublin 2.


Read this letter on the Irish Times website here

Monday, March 5, 2012

Pro Life Campaign awareness event at Dáil Éireann to mark 20th anniversary of Supreme Court X Case decision

 

 

5th March 2012


The Pro Life Campaign marked the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in the X Case yesterday with an article by spokesperson Dr. Ruth Cullen in the Irish Times and an awareness event held at Dáil Éireann.  

The 1992 case of the Attorney General -v- X was a landmark case when the Supreme Court held that abortion was permissible in certain circumstances, including the threat of suicide.  The court heard no medical evidence.  The X Case decision has not been legislated for in the twenty years since, largely because the position taken by the court is not supported by the Irish public and medical evidence.



Above: A selection of photos from today's awareness event

Spokesperson for the Pro Life Campaign, Cora Sherlock said in a press statement earlier today:
"The reason successive governments have not introduced abortion in line with the X case ruling is because there are fatal flaws in the court’s decision.

First, the court heard no medical evidence and set no time limits for when an abortion could take place. Second, legislation based on the X ruling would fly in the face of the mounting evidence in one peer-reviewed study after another showing serious negative effects for a significant number of women following from abortion.

Women deserve better than abortion and so do their babies. The challenge for us in Ireland is to keep improving our world leading record in safety for mothers and their unborn children rather than going down the route of legalised abortion".



 Irish people deserve to hear the full truth about abortion

 Dr. Ruth Cullen, The Irish Times, 5th March 2012




OPINION: TWO DECADES have passed since the Supreme Court ruled on the tragic X case.

The teenage girl at the centre of that case found herself in a horrific situation, and the Irish people’s overriding feeling at the time was one of immense sympathy for her.


Tragically, however, the decision of the Supreme Court seemed to be that, in order to show care for the girl, article 40.3.3, introduced specifically to protect the unborn child, had to be interpreted to allow abortion.

Over the last 20 years, there has been quite an amount of legal and political commentary on the ruling.

However, the evidence, or rather the lack of evidence, upon which the ruling was grounded has received less scrutiny.

The court decided that Ireland’s pro-life amendment permitted legal abortion in circumstances where there was “a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother”.

It further ruled that these circumstances included the threat of suicide.

However, the court heard no medical evidence on the question of whether abortion protected women from suicide. And increasingly, we are seeing medical research demonstrating that far from protecting women from suicide, abortion increases the risk that women will suffer grave mental health problems.

For example, the widely publicised Finnish study, which appeared in the European Journal of Public Health, showed that there was a significantly increased risk of suicide among women who had abortions.

They were six times more likely to commit suicide compared with those who had their babies.

Research carried out recently by Dr David Fergusson in New Zealand and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that, compared to other women, there was a 30 per cent greater risk of mental health complications among women who had abortions.

This research undercuts the rationale at the very heart of the X case ruling, a rationale for which there had been little basis in the first place.

The Supreme Court also failed to hear evidence showing that Ireland is the safest place in the world for women to give birth.

Sadly, and alarmingly, politicians seeking to legalise abortion are inexcusably ignoring this fact even today. The TDs who introduced a private members’ Bill on abortion a fortnight ago have attempted to create the impression that pregnant women in Ireland are being denied medical treatment because of the lack of available abortion.

However, they are wilfully ignoring the evidence of UN statistics which show Ireland as a world leader in terms of maternal mortality.

What has been missing from this debate are the voices of women who regret their abortions.

Five years after the X case, Ireland was confronted with yet another traumatising abortion court case, the C case.

This involved a young girl who was pregnant as a result of rape. The High Court decided that it was in the best interests of the girl to permit the then Eastern Health Board, who had taken the girl into care, to take her to England for an abortion.

But in an interview in 2009 the woman at the centre of the case said that her abortion caused great pain and sorrow.

Her story and the stories of many other women who regret their abortions have been effectively silenced.

For too long they have been ignored and in some cases dismissed by those, such as the National Women’s Council, who claim to speak for all women.

The group recently appointed by the Government to examine Irish law on abortion, must take these stories into account, as well as the reality that Ireland is the safest country in the world in which to be pregnant.

It might also look at what happens in countries where abortion is made legal.

In the US, abortionist Dr Kermit Gosnell was recently charged with killing seven born babies and a 41-year-old woman on whom he had performed an abortion.

One of Gosnell’s victims, Robyn Reid, said that when she heard he had been charged with killing viable babies with scissors and giving a woman a lethal dose of painkillers, she felt sick.

“I didn’t know that he was such a monster doing this to everyone,” Reid said.

“I didn’t think it’d happened to somebody else. I thought it was just me.”

Stories like this and the recent revelations from Britain about abortionists performing sex-selective abortions reveal the full implications of what legal abortion entails.

Fine Gael gave clear commitments at the last election that “women in pregnancy will receive whatever treatments in pregnancy are necessary to safeguard their lives, and that the duty of care to preserve the life of the baby will also be upheld”.

Public opinion backs this stance.

When people have the distinction between necessary medical interventions during pregnancy and induced abortion made clear to them, in poll after poll, they reject abortion.

Twenty years after the X case, the Irish people deserve to hear the full story about abortion