Repeal the 8th Amendment to the Constitution
Workers’ Party statement on Abortion in Ireland
The issue of women’s reproductive rights in Ireland needs to be seen within the context of efforts to control women and their bodies. The laws and institutions governing abortion are the most recent incarnation of a myriad of institutional measures and schemes which have existed since before the foundation of the state to control women’s sexuality.
The Workers’ Party recognises that women have the right to control their own bodies, including their fertility, and to pursue all reproductive choices. This is fundamental to any reasonable concept of gender equality. The Party rejects the paternalistic attitude that regards women as second class citizens incapable of making their own decisions.
The current situation pertaining to abortion in Ireland not only creates an atmosphere of fear and confusion, laying the foundation for intimidation and stigmatization, but also has been dangerous to women’s health and has even led to death. While all women are adversely affected by the lack of access to safe and legal abortion, the situation whereby women have to travel to Britain to have their abortions in private clinics has a particularly negative impact on women of poor economic means, rural women and migrant women.
Sections 58 and 59 of The Offences Against the Person Act 1861 remain the basis of criminal law on abortion in Ireland. This Act criminalizes both women who ‘procure a miscarriage’ and anyone who assists a woman to ‘procure a miscarriage’. The punishment in both cases was life imprisonment. The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 retains the criminalization of abortion. It has made provision to replace sections 58 and 59 of the 1861 Act with a single offence of the intentional destruction of “unborn human life” carrying a punishment of 14 years in prison. The 2013 Act permits abortion only where there is a “real and substantial risk” to the life of a pregnant woman, including risk through suicide. Though the Act became law in January 2014, medical guidelines have yet to be published.
Within months of its commencement the Act has been shown to be unworkable, as illustrated through the story of Ms Y, a young woman who had just arrived in this country. Although Ms Y, who had been raped in her own country, had asked for an abortion as soon as she discovered she was pregnant, the obstacles which she had to overcome, as she manoeuvred her way through the steps set down by the 2013 Act, meant that she ran out of time, resulting in the baby being delivered by C Section at 25 weeks.
However, the 2013 Act does not exist in a vacuum. It was written to solve a problem created by the Eight Amendment to the Constitution.
In the early 1980s the anti-choice lobby had argued that the 1861 Act allowed for abortion in certain circumstances. Following a bitterly contested referendum campaign the Eighth Amendment was inserted into the Constitution in 1983 whereby ‘The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn, and with due regard to the life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as is practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.’
Government officials at the time and a succession of Attorneys General warned of the dangers and conflicts that this amendment could bring about. Over the following thirty years a plethora of legal cases at both national and European level demonstrated how correct those warnings were. The stories behind the cases demonstrate how cruel and barbaric our society is through the manner in which it denies basic human rights to women when they are at their most vulnerable, including young girls who have been raped.
While the Supreme Court in 1992 ruled that an abortion could occur if there was ‘a real and substantial risk’ to the life of the mother, including through suicide, the unwillingness of successive governments over the next twenty years to legislate accordingly left doctors in limbo and women without the possibility to access their rights.
In 2012 the death of Savita Halappanavar, who died having been refused an abortion which would have saved her life, added to the pressure being exercised by the Council of Europe on the Irish Government to expedite the implementation of the European Court of Human Rights judgement in the case of A, B and C v Ireland. The court had ruled that Ireland’s failure to implement the existing constitutional right to a lawful abortion in Ireland when a woman’s life was at risk violated C’s rights under Art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
By the end of 2013 the President had signed into law The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013.
As predicted, the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution has proven to be dangerous and conflicting in its interpretation. Over the years successive governments steered clear of drawing up legislation which would have given effect to the amendment because of feared political fall-out. The result has been that women have suffered unnecessarily and, as in the case of Savita Halappanavar, died. The 2013 Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act was a response to national and international pressure but falls far short of respecting the rights of women.
The Workers’ Party believes that the Eighth Amendment makes it impossible to legislate for the termination of pregnancy in a way that is compatible with the concept of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. For this reason the Party believes that the Eighth Amendment must be repealed.
The Workers’ Party believes that abortion is a medical matter and as such calls for abortion to be decriminalized. As a society we must respect a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and accept that there are no deserving and undeserving women with entitlement to an abortion. It is not possible to legislate for specific situations.
The Workers’ Party believes in a woman’s right to choose and calls for the provision of free safe and legal abortion for all women in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. This provision will include practical facilities to support women seeking an abortion and quality post abortion care.
The Workers’ Party will join with other progressive groups to vigorously campaign for the removal of the Eighth Amendment from the Constitution and for all necessary legislative change to facilitate the provision of free, safe and legal abortion in the Republic of Ireland and for the extension of the 1967 UK Abortion Act to Northern Ireland.