Threat to health is not enough to give a woman the right to an abortion in Ireland

I AM afraid Nick Folley (Letters, June 12) is mistaken in the belief that “Irish law allows for abortion where there is a threat to the health of the mother.”

Jennifer Dewan (Letters, May 31) was right. Our only legal ruling on the issue, in the ‘X’ case, stated that abortion is permissible in Ireland only “if it is established … that there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as distinct from the health, of the mother.”

Fifteen years after the ‘X’ case, we still do not have legislation to clarify whether “a real and substantial risk” to a woman’s life means that abortion is permissible when a woman suffers a condition that threatens her life or if she must be in imminent danger of dying.

We know that substantially more than 100,000 Irish women have chosen, or been forced by circumstances, to travel to Britain for legal abortions.

We do not know how many others, like the Irish woman caught up in a raid in Poland in recent weeks, seek help in Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and elsewhere, use backstreet abortionists or the web to import abortifacients.

We have seen teenage girls dragged through the courts to seek permission to travel for abortions, most recently in a case in which a young woman carried a foetus that would not live outside her body. Three Irish women’s cases await admissibility rulings at the European Court of Human Rights.

Why have we no legislation on preserving women’s lives and health, or permitting abortion if we have been raped or subjected to incest? Why is the only abortion legislation an 1861 act that threatens us with up to life imprisonment if we have an abortion: a piece of legislation that seems ridiculous given that such a high proportion of Irish women have had abortions, albeit outside the jurisdiction.

Is the reason why we have failed to face up to these matters that, within the political establishment and the dominant church, those with real influence have no personal experience or understanding of the problems that may arise in pregnancy, never mind recognising a woman’s or a couple’s right to make a free and informed choice about whether to continue the pregnancy?

Sandra McAvoy

Cork Women’s Right to Choose Group

Ballincurrig Park

Cork