‘Abortion will not be affected’
The official position on abortion, as defined by a Supreme Court judgment, was that it could be permitted only in cases where there was a direct threat to the life of the mother, the risk of suicide included.
Bertie Ahern, the then taoiseach, was leading the charge for a yes vote, the effects of which would have been to remove the risk of suicide by the mother as grounds for legal abortion.
At his party’s final press conference prior to voting day, Mr Ahern was asked if he believed a no vote would ultimately lead to abortion on demand in Ireland.
With no hesitation, he declared: “Yes, I do.”
Yet the public voted no, and it has not affected Ireland’s position one iota. Six years on, abortion on demand is not available here, with no remote prospect of it being introduced in the foreseeable future, either.
The former taoiseach’s claim proved to be nothing more than scaremongering. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. Fianna Fáil is desperately trying to get a yes vote in another referendum, only this time it is insisting that the Lisbon treaty won’t affect the Irish position on abortion.
Much to the party’s chagrin, however, pro-life elements of the no campaign are selling a very different message — namely that passing the treaty would give Europe the power to impose abortion on Ireland.
Fianna Fáil has labelled this scaremongering of the worst sort. It may be hypocritical for a party which itself once used the tactic to now cry foul over others doing so, yet it doesn’t change a basic fact: Fianna Fáil appears to be correct in this instance.
The evidence firmly suggests there is nothing in the Lisbon treaty that will affect the Irish position on abortion.
To see why, it is necessary to go back to 1992, when the then government negotiated a protocol which was inserted into the Maastricht treaty.
That protocol ensured the EU could not interfere with the Irish position on the right to life of the unborn, as enshrined in article 40.3.3 of our constitution.
In full, the protocol stated: “Nothing in the treaty on European Union, or in the treaties establishing the European communities, or in the treaties or acts modifying or supplementing those treaties, shall affect the application in Ireland of article 40.3.3 of the Constitution of Ireland.”
Lisbon makes one change to that protocol, replacing the words “nothing in the treaty on European Union, or in the treaties establishing the European communities” with “nothing in the treaties, or in the treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community”.
And that’s it. There is nothing, therefore, in the treaty which changes or affects the 1992 protocol.
But Cóir, an anti-Lisbon group which shares offices with Youth Defence, argues otherwise. It claims the treaty will give the European Court of Justice the power to impose abortion on Ireland.
How so? The treaty, if passed, would give legal force to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a document which sets out a range of civil, political, economic and social rights of European citizens and all those resident in the EU.
Essentially, Cóir argues that the charter would give the European Court the leeway to declare abortion as a right and impose abortion on demand here.
Were this the case, Fianna Fáil, as the most conservative of the main political parties, would hardly be supporting the treaty.
Let’s look then to what groups in the no camp, other than Cóir, are saying.
Arguably the two leading groups urging voters to reject Lisbon — Sinn Féin and Libertas — admit abortion is a non-issue as far as the treaty is concerned.
Sinn Féin MEP Mary Lou McDonald, for instance, when recently asked what impact passing the treaty would have on abortion law here, responded: “I don’t believe it will have any.”
Similarly, Caroline Simons, a spokeswoman for Libertas, said yesterday that while the charter might have implications for other areas of reproductive health — such as stem-cell research — it would not impact on abortion laws here.
But perhaps the most persuasive voice concerning pro-life issues is the Catholic church. While not explicitly endorsing the treaty, the Irish bishops issued a statement last week broadly supportive of Lisbon. The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin couldn’t have been clearer in his interpretation of what Lisbon would — or would not — do: “I do not believe that this treaty changes the current position with regard to Ireland’s position on abortion within the EU.”
FOREIGN AFFAIRS Minister Micheál Martin claimed the bishops’ intervention had served to “thoroughly discredit” the claim that the treaty would affect Ireland’s position on abortion.
“[Last] week saw the complete discrediting of the tactic of Youth Defence to try to scare people with the claim that the Lisbon treaty could impose new abortion laws on us. In addition, their claims that Lisbon would force prostitution and hard drugs on the country reflect the extreme nature of this group’s propaganda.”
COIR summed up its position forcefully in a recent press release: “Where such an important issue as abortion is concerned, the Lisbon treaty could take the decision away from the people of Ireland and give it to an unelected, unrepresentative, and largely anti-life bench of EU Court judges to decide the fate of our unborn children.
“Not only our abortion laws but our laws protecting marriage and the family could be overruled by the EU Court of Justice if Lisbon was passed.”
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