By Evelyn Ring
Friday, January 29, 2010
WOMEN entitled to a legal abortion in Ireland cannot get one because of deliberately obscure anti-abortion policies, a leading human rights organisation has claimed.
Human Rights Watch has accused the Government of actively seeking to restrict access to abortion services and information, both within Ireland and for residents seeking care abroad.
In particular, it has criticised the lack of legal and policy guidance on when an abortion might be legally performed within Ireland.
"The Irish Government has failed utterly to ensure that health services are available to those women who are legally entitled to an abortion," claims a report by the independent body.
It says some doctors in Ireland are reluctant even to provide pre-natal screening for severe foetal abnormalities and very few, if any, women, have access to legal abortions at home.
Marianne Mollmann, women’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said women in need of abortion services should be able to count on support from their government as they face a difficult situation.
"But in Ireland they are actively stonewalled, stigmatised and written out," Ms Mollmann said at the launch of a 57-paper report, entitled A State of Isolation: Access to Abortion for Women in Ireland, in Dublin yesterday.
"Irish law on abortion is in and of itself an affront to human rights. But it is made worse by the fact that even those who may qualify for a legal abortion in Ireland cannot get one due to deliberately murky policies that carry an implied threat of prosecution."
Ms Mollmann said women should have publicly available information on how to seek abortion services abroad and there should be medical guidelines for the kind of abortions that are currently legal within Ireland.
"Your newspaper (Irish Examiner) just published a survey saying that over 60% of young adults agree that abortion should be legalised. So it is a little bit of a myth that the Irish population believes that abortion should be a criminal offence."
Rosie Toner, crisis pregnancy counsellor with the Irish Family Planning Association, said the report illustrated the reality faced by thousands of Irish women. Since 1980, over 140,000 women have been forced to travel abroad for an abortion, she pointed out.
"Women are put under severe burdens of distress to try and find medical services in other countries to give them a service they believe should be available to them here in Ireland," said Ms Toner.
The IFPA had been advocating for safe and legal abortion in Ireland over the last two decades.
The Cork Women’s Right to Choose Group said the report and three cases taken by Irish women to the European Court of Human rights demonstrate that successive governments had been blind to women’s needs.
"Making abortion illegal does not stop it happening, it simply makes it more stressful and dangerous," said spokesperson Dr Sandra McAvoy.
This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, January 29, 2010
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