Ireland’s anti-abortion laws are keeping a 17-year-old from aborting a brain-damaged fetus.
An Irish teen is fighting for her right to travel to England and have an abortion. The fetus “Miss D” is carrying has anencephaly, a condition which means that a large part of the brain and skull is missing. Babies with anencephaly live a maximum of three days after birth.
The 17-year-old girl is forbidden to have an abortion in predominantly Catholic Ireland where the procedure is illegal. Although both her mother and her boyfriend support her wish, “Miss D” has been placed under the legal guardianship of the government’s Health Service Executive (HSE), which opposes her desire to go to England and has imposed a travel ban on her. The girl’s lawyer argues that forcing her to carry the fetus to full term only to watch it die is “most inhumane.” However, Ireland’s attorney general’s office has appointed lawyers to represent the rights of the unborn child in Miss D’s womb, in an effort to ensure that Ireland’s 1983 constitutional ban on abortion is upheld. On Friday lawyers for HSE suggested she might be permitted to make the journey under certain conditions.
An estimated 7 000 Irish women travel to England yearly to have abortions where the procedure was legalized in 1967. Receiving information about English abortion services was illegal in Ireland until 1992 when the parents of a 14-year-old rape victim fought the law when the police blocked them from taking their daughter to England. The Supreme Court ruled that the girl, who was threatening to commit suicide, should have been entitled to travel to England for an abortion or receive the procedure in Ireland, as her life was threatened by the pregnancy. In a referendum the same year, Irish people voted for the right to receive information about English abortion services and the right to travel there for such a purpose. Voters rejected a proposal to make abortion legal in Ireland in cases where the pregnant woman’s life was threatened. However, four successive Irish governments have refused to pass laws in accordance with the Supreme Court rulings, leaving the issue of abortion in Ireland in legal limbo.
This article was published Monday, May 7, 2007
