Criticism ahead of abortion ban fight

AN international pro-choice movement has criticised the Government for failing to protect the reproductive rights of women on the eve of a legal challenge to the Irish ban on abortion.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), of which the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) is a member, said the Government had “consistently put barriers in the way of women” who seek an abortion, forcing them to travel overseas.

The federation’s director general Dr Gill Greer, said: “In this the Irish Government is not only going against the global trend to legalise and liberalise abortion laws, they are going against the majority of their own citizens whom recent opinion polls show to be broadly in favour of liberalising the law.”