Why can’t a woman get a life-saving abortion in Ireland?

Ireland has produced many brave and influential women whose lives have helped change Irish society, but it’s a tragic irony that one of those who’s had the biggest impact – and sparked the longest-running controversy – is someone whose name we don’t know, who was only 14 when she came to our (and the world’s) attention and who you can bet would have given anything to have never been heard from in the first place.

She’s known as Miss X, and 20 years ago she was raped and impregnated by a much older family “friend”. Ireland is still governed by 1861 (!) legislation which makes abortion a crime punishable by life imprisonment, so her parents took her to England. When they contacted Irish police to ask if the embryonic remains might be useful as evidence, the police contacted the Attorney General, who promptly sought an injunction to compel her to return to Ireland and remain for the next nine months.

This astonishingly cruel and repressive act was “justified”, according to the Attorney General, by Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution. Passed by referendum in 1983, the Article reads:

The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

Miss X, however, was threatening suicide if she was forced to bear her rapist’s child and so her lawyers argued that her own right to life – also protected by Article 40.3.3 – was engaged. In the High Court, Justice Declan Costello (who was eulogised on his death last year for his commitment to social justice) applied a crude balancing test to reach his decision: if Miss X was forced to continue the pregnancy, she might die, but if she was allowed an abortion the foetus would die. He thus granted the injunction barring her from travel. more on >>