Abortion laws under pressure from Council of Europe

IRELAND has come under pressure from the Council of Europe to stop criminalising women who have abortions and allow them access to the procedure.

An Irish woman can be jailed for life if she has an abortion in Ireland, but, if she can afford to travel, she can legally get one abroad, the council was told.

A report before the human rights body, of which the Government is a member, was supported by a range of Irish groups that hope it will help change the current law that forbids abortion unless the woman’s life is in danger.

Catherine Forde, a lawyer with the Irish Family Planning Association, told the council: “Women pregnant as a result of rape and incest and women carrying a foetus that cannot live must scurry like criminals to foreign jurisdictions to have an abortion.”

Christine McCafferty, a council member from Britain and one of the report’s authors, said Ireland’s laws meant women had to resort to what she called abortion tourism.

“Irish women have good reproductive health and low maternal mortality rates but this is because their women are dependent on safe abortions they get abroad, including in the UK,” she said.

The parliamentarians from 47 European countries said abortion should be avoided as far as possible and in no circumstances be regarded as a family-planning method.

“But a total ban does not result in fewer abortions, leading instead to traumatic clandestine abortions and abortion tourism.”

They said medical and psychological care, as well as suitable financial cover, should be offered to women seeking abortions, and conditions that restrict access to safe abortion within reasonable time limits should be lifted.

Senator Terry Leydon, Fianna Fáil, a member of the Council of Europe, said the report was flawed in that it assumed not allowing abortion resulted in high levels of maternal deaths and back-street abortion. Its proposals would be against the will of the majority of people in a number of member states, he added.

A letter from the Irish Family Planning Association and other groups to the council said the figure of 7,000 from Ireland having abortions in Britain underestimated the numbers as some may give false addresses in Britain or travel to other countries like Belgium and the Netherlands.