Women have waited long enough for politicians to do their jobs

THERE is broad agreement that the Dáil must provide a legislative framework for a woman’s right to an abortion when her life depends on it, yet division persists about the inclusion of suicide as a risk to life.

People on the anti-choice side of thedebate, citing the UK’s 1967 Abortion Act, say that inclusion of suicide in any legislation would open the floodgates to abortion-on-demand in this country.

This claim is specious. Legislation here would have to comply with the constitutional position that an abortion can only be countenanced when there is “real and substantial risk” to the life of the woman.

In contrast, the UK’s decades-old liberalisation of its laws provided for an abortion in circumstances where “the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman” or when “there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”.

You don’t have to be a legal expert to appreciate that the Oireachtas is precluded, by the pre-eminent legal authority in this country — the Constitution — from enacting similar provisions here.

In the unlikely event that TDs suddenly championed the autonomy of women’s reproductive rights, another referendum would be required, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

So, the notion that legislating for the X case in its entirety would, somehow, create an equivalence between Ireland’s extremely restrictive abortion laws and the UK’s much more liberal regime, is, to be blunt, bunkum.

Additionally, there has been much ignorant, derisive, and just plain offensive commentary in recent weeks about the likely consequences of legislating to allow suicidal women avail of an abortion.

Images of droves of desperate, pregnant women battering down the door of the nearest psychiatrist and demanding an immediate termination have been conjured up.

Implicit in this scaremongering is the idea that women are so devious that they would, en masse, feign suicidal ideation to access an abortion.

It also suggests that psychiatrists and psychologists are so stupid and incompetent as to be unable to differentiate between real and spurious claims — hardly a ringing endorsement of the profession.

It is worthwhile, therefore, injecting reality into the debate by referring back to the controversial X Case judgement that instituted these changes to Irish law.

Anti-choice campaigners complain about the lack of psychiatric evidence adduced at the Supreme Court hearing but, in fact, a clinical psychologist examined Ms X, the 14-year-old rape victim.

The clinical psychologist was so concerned by her behaviour, after his examination, that he refused to allow her to remain alone in the waiting room while he spoke to her parents.

Later, at the hearing, he testified that she told him: “I thought about not putting my parents through more, it would be better to end it now than nine months more. It is hard to understand … it is hard at 14 to go through nine months.”

How many of those now up in arms about allowing suicidal women and girls access to an abortion in this country would deny someone, in a similar situation today, the right to terminate their pregnancy? How many of those, avowedly anti-choice, would, if their own teenage daughter was in Ms X’s position, force her to continue with the pregnancy, knowing that she could opt to end her life at any moment? How many would be willing to take that risk?

The psychologist was convinced that the girl was making legitimate threats and said: “I felt she might commit suicide or decide to terminate [the foetus] herself by throwing herself down the stairs, or something like that. That is the kind of thing that happened in previous cases I dealt with, where girls attempted to gain abortion,” he said.

The fact that it was commonplace for young girls to throw themselves down stairs in a desperate attempt to end their pregnancies was added as something of an afterthought. Yet that, alone, would not have been sufficient to allow a termination. That remains the position and will remain the position even if legislation is enacted.

Suicide in pregnancy is extremely rare, but there is research indicating that the problem may be underestimated when recording causes of death.

The World Health Organisation, in a global review of literature published in 2009, cited research that investigations of suicide in women often failed to report pregnancy status or consider it an explanatory factor.

“Suicide is disproportionately associated with adolescent pregnancy, and appears to be the last resort for women with an unwanted pregnancy in settings where reproductive choice is limited, for example … where legal pregnancy termination services are unavailable,” it concluded.

Sound familiar? Baldly stating, as some have done, that pregnant women never commit suicide, so there is no need to legislate for it, flies in the face of the available research.

Certainly, it is rare, like all real and substantial risks to pregnant women’s lives, but it does happen, so politicians cannot shirk from their duty to include it in legislation.

A PLACARD at last week’s pro-choice rally in Dublin, neatly encapsulated this message for recalcitrant TDs: “Politicians make shitty doctors.”

In cases it needs stating, medical treatment for women should not be the preserve of 166 random men and women in Leinster House, but should be a matter for trained professionals who can expertly determine the best course of action in individual cases — whatever that may be.

Ultimately, of course, politicians’ personal feelings on this are immaterial or, at least, they should be.

Since 1992, the constitutional position has been clear and any legislation that is now belatedly enacted will not, as some have tried to erroneously suggest, amount to a liberalisation of the law, but will merely give effect to rights that have existed for decades.

The bewildering controversy would be somewhat easier to understand if the X case determination, of suicide as a risk to life, had not been endorsed by a majority of the Irish electorate. Twice.

Although they may want to, politicians cannot continue to ignore the Supreme Court, referendum results and the European Court of Human Rights and, arbitrarily, pick and choose which aspects of the X case they want to legislate for.

The judgement is not a smorgasbord of potential rights, but amounts to a unitary right, for every woman who faces a real and substantial risk to her life during her pregnancy, to an abortion.

Now that the expert group report has finally been published and recommended legislation, as anyone with half a brain knew it would, the onus is on the Government to stop dithering and start the protracted process of drafting the required legislation.

This is particularly true considering the Coalition has already torpedoed Clare Daly’s draft legislation and will likely do so again tonight, for purely political reasons.

The women of this country have waited long enough for politicians to do their jobs.