By Sally Low
and Tracy Sorensen
In a victory for women's rights, the Irish Supreme Court has overturned a High Court injunction which prevented a pregnant 14-year-old rape victim travelling to Britain for an abortion. The ban would have made the young woman, said to have been suicidal, a prisoner in the republic until the birth of her child.
The judgment, which confirmed the primacy of European law over the Irish constitution, was probably more about Ireland's place in the new Europe than about protecting women's rights. The ban was a direct challenge to the rights, now under negotiation, of European Community citizens to travel freely between EC states and to avail themselves of services that are legal in other EC states.
Comments from Euro MPs about the case reveal how far out of step Ireland is considered to be on this issue. The European parliament's legal affairs committee president, Willy Rothly, said of the case: "It is reminiscent of the Middle Ages. In the EC we do not need fundamentalists."
Another member of the committee said that "only states which have experienced the Age of Enlightenment" should be members of the EC.
The fact that the case has been posed as a victory for enlightenment over theocracy puts feminists across Europe in a good position to argue against remaining legal restrictions.
In Germany, for example, women from the old East German state will, after a transition period, be required to abide by the old West German anti-abortion laws in the new united state. German women travelling to other countries for their abortions could well ask why a more enlightened position is not being taken by the EC's most powerful state.
The Irish case unfolded after the 14-year-old and her parents went to the Gardai, the Irish police, with the address of the abortion clinic they were intending to go to in London. They thought a genetic sample taken from the foetus could be used as evidence against the rapist.
When the police went to the attorney-general's office with the information, they were told that DNA tissue collected from the foetus would be inadmissible as evidence (it would be the product of an illegal act), and that the attorney-general would seek an injunction preventing travel. By this time, the young woman and her family were already in London. They returned to Ireland, without going through with the abortion, when notified of the injunction.
As women's groups pointed out, the lesson for Irish women in all this was: If you are raped, don't go to the police.
"Rapists 1, Women 0" and "Ireland allows men to procreate through the placards carried by more than 5000 people who demonstrated in Dublin on February 24. Among the crowd was Irish singer Sinead O'Connor, who is not afraid to say publicly that she has had two abortions.
Mary Lucey, a representative of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, maintained that the foetus's right to life "does not depend on the circumstances surrounding our conception".
Many observers point out that a case like this one was inevitable since a constitutional amendment passed by referendum in 1983. The clause, supported by 65% of votes cast (but with 50% abstaining), acknowledged the "right to life of the unborn". The clause stated that this right should be respected "as far as is practicable".
While a clear definition of what is "practicable" is not embodied in the clause, the Irish legal system has so far interpreted it in the strictest sense: a total ban on the procedure in Ireland, and on information on how to obtain it outside the country.
While the Supreme Court's ruling clears the way for women to continue to travel to London for abortions, it does nothing to reverse the existing legal situation in Ireland itself.
To get an abortion in Ireland today, women must have money to travel, and information (illegally supplied) about where to go. With the 1983 referendum victory under their belt, SPUC and Ireland's other anti-abortion campaigners turned their attention to groups continuing to counsel women about their pregnancies and provide information on abortions in Britain.
These groups included women's health services and student unions. Women's health services have been shut down after harassment and legal action against them; their cases, and those of the student unions, have found their way into European courts.
English magazines have blank spots where advertisements for abortion services or referral and counselling clinics would normally have appeared. Pages in English telephone books which bear the numbers of such centres have been removed.
But while direct information about where to go to for an abortion is considered illegal, there is less confidence about less direct information. Books, such as The New Our Bodies Ourselves have been removed from library shelves, and the media and other public bodies have censored themselves because they are unsure of what exactly is in breach of the constitution.
As the Guardian Weekly commented on February 23, it is "not illegal to discuss abortion but it is illegal to help someone to have an abortion. Where, then, does discussion move into help, legality fade into illegality?"
Ironically, it is estimated that the number of women travelling to London or Liverpool for an abortion — about 8000 a year — has 83.
Ruth Riddick, who worked for Open Line Counselling before it was forced to close, claims that now fewer women seek counselling which might have led them to decide against a termination. She pointed out that "the more repressive the climate, the more you encourage recourse to abortion."