Pro Choice: No way around fact legislation is required

THE long-awaited report of the expert group on the judgment in A, B and C v Ireland was published yesterday, and much of what was contained therein will not have come as a shock to those who have been following the debate on the issue.

The creation of an expert group in the first place was a mechanism designed by the then government to put off the inevitable act of legislating for the X case judgment which was handed down by the Supreme Court in 1992 that said pregnant women had a constitutional right to an abortion where it was established that as a matter of probability she had a real and substantial risk to her life.

Irish governments have form in this regard and this particular expert group is not the first to have deliberated on the matter.