WUNRN
Human Rights Watch
ACCESS
TO ABORTION FOR WOMEN IN IRELAND
Direct Link to Full 57-Page Report:
Dublin,
January 28, 2010 - The Irish government actively seeks to restrict access to
abortion services and information both within Ireland and for its residents
seeking care abroad, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 57-page report, "A State of Isolation: Access to Abortion for Women in Ireland,"
details how women struggle to overcome the financial, logistical, physical, and
emotional burdens imposed by restrictive laws and policies that force them to
seek care abroad, without support from the state. Every year thousands of women
and girls travel from Ireland to other European countries for abortions.
"Women in need of abortion services should, as a matter of international
law and - frankly -human decency, be able to count on support from their
government as they face a difficult situation," said Marianne Mollmann,
women's rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "But in Ireland
they are actively stonewalled, stigmatized, and written out."
In Ireland, abortion is legally restricted in almost all circumstances, with
potential penalties of penal servitude for life for both patients and service
providers, except where the pregnant woman's life is in danger, but there is
little legal and policy guidance on when, specifically, an abortion might be
legally performed within Ireland. As a result, some doctors are reluctant even
to provide pre-natal screening for severe fetal abnormalities, and very few -
if any - women have access to legal abortions at home. The government has
indicated that it has no current plans to clarify the possible reach of the
criminal penalties. The government does not keep figures on legal and illegal
abortions carried out in Ireland, or on the number of women traveling abroad
for services.
"Irish law on abortion is in and of itself an affront to human
rights," Mollmann said. "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."
But women also face more active sabotaging of their health decisions by the
state. Throughout the last two decades, the Irish government has used
injunctions to prevent individuals from traveling abroad for abortion. As
recently as 2007, a 17-year-old girl in the custody of the Health Services
Executive had to go to court to get permission to travel to the United Kingdom
for an abortion.
Organizations that provide information on how to access abortion services
abroad face restrictions on when and how this information can legally be
conveyed, under threat of penalties. And the government does nothing to prevent
"rogue" agencies that represent themselves as providers of information
about abortion from circulating blatantly misleading and false information.
"Women should not have to make decisions about their health and lives
based on lies," Mollmann said. "Yet the law leaves ‘rogue' agencies
unregulated and threatens honest service providers with fines or worse if they
help a distressed woman make a phone call to a clinic abroad."
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