Threshold for termination reduced

The Taoiseach and senior Cabinet ministers have said that the proposed legislation on abortion will not change the law.

This line has been repeated so many times that you almost get the feeling that the Government have convinced themselves that this is true.

While this is certainly a reassuring political soundbite, particularly for wavering backbench TDs, the fact remains that it is absolutely untrue.

In essence, there are three sources of domestic law in Ireland — the Constitution, the common law (court judgments) and legislation enacted by the Oireachtas.

It would be correct to say that neither the Constitution (Article 40.3.3) nor the common law (the judgment in the X case) are being changed by this new law, and nor can they be.

However, the third element of our legal framework, that of legislation, is quite clearly being changed since there will now be legislation in an area where there currently is none.

An analogy can be drawn between this new legislation and the manner of the introduction of legislation for civil partnerships in 2010.

In that instance, the Constitution was not changed, nor were any previous court judgments, and yet this law was quite rightly seen as one of the most far-reaching pieces of legal change since the foundation of the State. I didn’t hear anyone in Government or Opposition at the time asserting that the law was “not being changed”, and clearly it would have been ludicrous to suggest anything of the kind.

And yet on this occasion, in a similar set of procedural circumstances, the Government is maintaining this laughable notion that the law is not, in fact, being changed.

To visualise the extent to which it is being changed you need only do a simple “before and after” analysis of the contentious issue of suicidal ideation.

As the law stands a woman who believes herself to be suicidal as a result of her pregnancy must obtain an order of the High Court to secure a termination of her pregnancy.

Under the new law, however, she canobtain the necessary legal clearance from three doctors in her local hospital.

This is a vast reduction in the threshold for a termination in the case of suicidal ideation and it is an utter nonsense for the Government to suggest that it represents anything other than a fundamental and far-reaching change in the law.

Thomas Ryan BL

Harold’s Cross

Dublin 6W