China criticises Ireland's many child policy?

Hearing that the United Nations was recommending that Ireland change its laws to legislate for abortion was a little like sliding into a parallel universe. Apparently the UN Human Rights Council gets to review Ireland's record on human rights on a regular basis. Along with issues like prison conditions they get to remark on our abortion laws. Anyway this fine organization told us that we were naughty and needed to change.  Current members include China (no, seriously it does!) and Nigeria (home of many an asylum seeker in Ireland). You'll excuse me if I'm not impressed with this august body. Admittedly China was not one of the countries asking Ireland to change her laws, but each country asking Ireland to change it's laws has a poorer maternal mortality rate than us with abortion laws that are very liberal. Perhaps they should take some of their own members aside and have a chat with them regarding what's happening at home.

Pro Life Campaign welcomes Government's rejection of abortion recommendations15th March 2012

The Irish Government's decision to reject recommendations made by a number of UN member states for Ireland to legislate for abortion “recognises the reality that Ireland is the safest country in the world for women to give birth” the Pro Life Campaign (PLC) has said.
Last October the Irish government appeared before the UN Human Rights Council as part of the Universal Periodic Review process and rejected calls made by six countries for Ireland to legislate for abortion.  The countries were Holland, Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, Norway and Spain.
A Government report designed as a response to a series of other recommendations made last year as part of the UN's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was presented in Geneva this morning and confirms Ireland's decision to reject calls for abortion.
Responding to the adoption of the Universal Periodic Review report, PLC spokesperson Dr Ruth Cullen welcomed the Government’s stance.
Dr Cullen said: “Calls for abortion legislation fly in the face of the United Nation's own recent research showing that Ireland, without abortion, is a world leader in terms of safety for women in pregnancy. Maternal safety in Ireland, it should be noted, is better than in the six countries which last year sought to put pressure on Ireland to introduce abortion. The latest UN study on maternal mortality, published in 2010, shows that out of 172 countries for which estimates are given, Ireland remains a world leader in safety for pregnant women.”

Abortion and mental health.

A follow up letter in today's Irish Times by Dr Ruth Cullen to some of the responses in her Irish Times article. Apparently some didn't like or agree with her:

Irish Times letters, March 13, 2012.

Sir, – Patrick Walsh (March 8th) takes issue with me (Opinion, March 5th) for not referring to the recent systematic review by the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) and its comments on mental health outcomes for women following abortion.
Mr Walsh also says that the review holds that unwanted pregnancy rather than abortion itself is linked to mental health problems. However, the review states that whether an unwanted pregnancy is continued or ends in abortion makes no difference to the mental health of the mother. This, therefore, undermines the argument that the termination of pregnancy by abortion will protect women’s mental health.
This feature of the review also completely undercuts the medical justification for abortion in countries like England where the vast majority are carried out on alleged mental health grounds. It is odd how some pro-choice groups are using the latest review as evidence to back up their case when it does nothing of the sort.
In addition, the review points to situations where abortion poses adverse outcomes for women. There is also mounting peer- reviewed evidence showing that abortion has negative consequences for women with no prior mental health problems. We need to acknowledge this honestly and factor it into the debate. – Yours, etc,
Dr RUTH CULLEN,

Are judges capable of making decisions about psychiatry without hearing psychiatric evidence?

The infamous X Case judgement of 20 years ago was a very tragic situation. It involved a fourteen year old girl who became pregnant after being raped and if she had a right to travel to England for an abortion.
I was struck by an RTÉ documentary a few nights ago. In it journalist Fintan O'Toole made a very emotive remark, saying something along the lines that the state was going to make the girl involved bear a child for her rapist. Well at least he admitted that it was a child. Of course the problem with is his argument was that because the child was conceived in rape it had less of a right to live than a child not conceived in rape. That just isn't logical. It puts limits on the right to life.
My own opinion is that if the state was to really help victims of sexual assault it would make greater effort to catch, prosecute and convict those guilty. Right now Ireland has a 7% conviction rate for sexual assault. But, I digress ...
Here is an excellent article by Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro Life Campaign and printed in the Irish Times a few days ago.

Irish people deserve to hear the full truth about abortion

Dr. Ruth Cullen, The Irish Times, 5th March 2012

OPINION: TWO DECADES have passed since the Supreme Court ruled on the tragic X case.
The teenage girl at the centre of that case found herself in a horrific situation, and the Irish people’s overriding feeling at the time was one of immense sympathy for her.
Tragically, however, the decision of the Supreme Court seemed to be that, in order to show care for the girl, article 40.3.3, introduced specifically to protect the unborn child, had to be interpreted to allow abortion.
Over the last 20 years, there has been quite an amount of legal and political commentary on the ruling.
However, the evidence, or rather the lack of evidence, upon which the ruling was grounded has received less scrutiny.
The court decided that Ireland’s pro-life amendment permitted legal abortion in circumstances where there was “a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother”.
It further ruled that these circumstances included the threat of suicide.
However, the court heard no medical evidence on the question of whether abortion protected women from suicide. And increasingly, we are seeing medical research demonstrating that far from protecting women from suicide, abortion increases the risk that women will suffer grave mental health problems.
For example, the widely publicised Finnish study, which appeared in the European Journal of Public Health, showed that there was a significantly increased risk of suicide among women who had abortions.
They were six times more likely to commit suicide compared with those who had their babies.
Research carried out recently by Dr David Fergusson in New Zealand and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that, compared to other women, there was a 30 per cent greater risk of mental health complications among women who had abortions.
This research undercuts the rationale at the very heart of the X case ruling, a rationale for which there had been little basis in the first place.
The Supreme Court also failed to hear evidence showing that Ireland is the safest place in the world for women to give birth.
Sadly, and alarmingly, politicians seeking to legalise abortion are inexcusably ignoring this fact even today. The TDs who introduced a private members’ Bill on abortion a fortnight ago have attempted to create the impression that pregnant women in Ireland are being denied medical treatment because of the lack of available abortion.
However, they are wilfully ignoring the evidence of UN statistics which show Ireland as a world leader in terms of maternal mortality.
What has been missing from this debate are the voices of women who regret their abortions.
Five years after the X case, Ireland was confronted with yet another traumatising abortion court case, the C case.
This involved a young girl who was pregnant as a result of rape. The High Court decided that it was in the best interests of the girl to permit the then Eastern Health Board, who had taken the girl into care, to take her to England for an abortion.
But in an interview in 2009 the woman at the centre of the case said that her abortion caused great pain and sorrow.
Her story and the stories of many other women who regret their abortions have been effectively silenced.
For too long they have been ignored and in some cases dismissed by those, such as the National Women’s Council, who claim to speak for all women.
The group recently appointed by the Government to examine Irish law on abortion, must take these stories into account, as well as the reality that Ireland is the safest country in the world in which to be pregnant.
It might also look at what happens in countries where abortion is made legal.
In the US, abortionist Dr Kermit Gosnell was recently charged with killing seven born babies and a 41-year-old woman on whom he had performed an abortion.
One of Gosnell’s victims, Robyn Reid, said that when she heard he had been charged with killing viable babies with scissors and giving a woman a lethal dose of painkillers, she felt sick.
“I didn’t know that he was such a monster doing this to everyone,” Reid said.
“I didn’t think it’d happened to somebody else. I thought it was just me.”
Stories like this and the recent revelations from Britain about abortionists performing sex-selective abortions reveal the full implications of what legal abortion entails.
Fine Gael gave clear commitments at the last election that “women in pregnancy will receive whatever treatments in pregnancy are necessary to safeguard their lives, and that the duty of care to preserve the life of the baby will also be upheld”.
Public opinion backs this stance.
When people have the distinction between necessary medical interventions during pregnancy and induced abortion made clear to them, in poll after poll, they reject abortion.
Twenty years after the X case, the Irish people deserve to hear the full story about abortion

Actually, no, they said that we needed to clarify the situation.

When the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgement on the A, B, C v Ireland case a lot of people were quick to jump to judgement. They told us that Ireland now had to legislate for abortion. They said nothing of the sort. In fact they upheld the Irish constitution as it stands where mothers and their unborn babies have the equal right to life.
Paul Brady, barrister and author wrote this article for last week's Sunday Business Post. Because you have to pay for online access to the Sunday Business Post (worth it, but I know that not all readers have that subscription) I'm linking to the Pro Life Campaign site.

Opportunity to clarify abortion law

By Paul Brady, Sunday Business Post, 29th January 2012

The group considering the implementation of the European Court's abortion decision must produce a 'series of options' that covers all the issues
The government has established an expert group to "recommend a series of options" on how to implement the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in A, B, C v Ireland.
This case involved a challenge to Ireland's abortion laws by three women who claimed, on various grounds, that Irish law violated their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
There was widespread — but needless — confusion when the court's judgment was published in December 2010. Some sought to portray it as a ruling from Strasbourg that Ireland was now legally obliged to legislate for a right to abortion on the terms of the 1992 Irish Supreme Court decision in the X case. This interpretation is contradicted by the actual judgment.
In fact, the decision rests on two key conclusions. First, the court held that current restrictions on abortion in Ireland constitute a fair balance of the rights and interests in what the court called the "wide margin of appreciation" enjoyed by member states on this issue.
Secondly, the court found that the "uncertainty" arising from the lack of legislation or "effective and accessible procedures" for deciding what is legally permissible in individual cases violated the third applicant's right to private life. All other complaints were dismissed.
The judgment is fairly straightforward. The court noted that it was up to each state to decide if it would legally protect unborn human life and, if so, to balance such protection fairly with the rights of others. Once that balance is struck, states must provide "implementing…and institutional procedures" to ensure that the legal implications for individuals can be readily established with reasonable certainty.
But even a "wide margin of appreciation" is not the same as a blank cheque, and its exercise remains — at least in principle — subject to review by the court.
The current "balance" in Irish law was created by the Supreme Court decision in the X case. It held that an abortion is lawful only when there is a "real and substantial risk" to the life, as opposed to the health, of the mother. The court also ruled that such a risk included any real and substantial risk that the mother might commit suicide. However, the court reached this conclusion without hearing expert psychiatric evidence.
In the past ten years, knowledge of the potential mental health effects associated with abortion has been greatly advanced by peer-reviewed studies. This raises a legitimate question as to the appropriateness of basing Ireland's legislative response on terms decided by five judges 20 years ago, uninformed by the findings of expert research.
The experience of Britain of abortion on psychiatric grounds is instructive. Of the 189,574 abortions recorded in England and Wales in 2010, 97.7 per cent were carried out on the reported ground that a doctor considered that continuing the pregnancy carried a greater risk of injury to the mental health of the woman than an abortion. In other words, almost one in five pregnancies in England and Wales are ended by abortion on mental health grounds.
It is no exaggeration to say that it has been an fundamental working assumption of the law and practice of abortion in Britain over the last 40 years that ending a pregnancy by abortion will typically lead to improved mental health outcomes.
This assumption has been challenged by one of the most sophisticated studies on the question ever conducted. Writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2009, Professor David Fergusson concluded that his research "clearly suggested that unwanted pregnancy leading to abortion was likely to be a risk factor for subsequent mental health problems, whereas unwanted pregnancy leading to live birth was not a risk factor for these problems".
Fergusson noted that no study had ever reported that abortion reduced mental health risks. In other words, on the empirical evidence available, it appears that a primary assumption underlying both the reasoning in the X case and the legal basis for the vast majority of abortions in Britain is, at best, questionable and, at worst, dangerously wrong.
Given the long debate over abortion in Ireland, it is perhaps understandable that some view the establishment of an expert group with a mix of cynicism and suspicion. If it is to confound such critics, the group must be fully cognisant of the Irish state's right — confirmed in ABC v Ireland — to determine its own substantive view on abortion and the equal dignity of every human life.
As persons chosen for their technical expertise rather than the representativeness of their moral views, the members of the expert group can best add value to the political process by producing as extensive and comprehensive a "series of options" as possible. Their report should detail objectively the constitutional, medical, legal and ethical issues and technicalities in respect of each option identified.
After that, as Europe has made clear, the responsibility will be on us, not only to decide our position, but to implement it clearly and thoroughly.
Paul Brady is a barrister and co-author of Psychiatry and the Law (Blackhall, 2010)

Why the "X" case ruling was not good basis for law. 

Very few people would argue that Professor William Binchy does not know the law better than most. He has some very good insights regarding the "X" case judgement of 20 years ago, how it was flawed and how it has contributed to the confusion ever since.This article from yesterday's Irish Times sets out why.

Supreme Court 'X' case ruling not good basis for abortion law

The Irish Times – Thursday, January 19, 2012
WILLIAM BINCHY
OPINION: THE GOVERNMENT’S appointment of the expert group to address the implications of the European Court of Human Rights decision in A, B C v Ireland gives us all the opportunity to reflect on the issue of legal protection for mothers and their unborn children.
Ireland has the enviable record of being among the very safest countries in the world for mothers during pregnancy – safer than a range of countries with far greater economic resources that have wide-ranging legalised abortion.
The task for the expert group is to recommend legal support for doctors to continue to uphold the principle of doing the best possible for two patients – mother and child – during pregnancy. There are times when this can result in the death of the unborn child, which is not the intended purpose of the treatment of the mother.
The mistake that the Supreme Court made in the X case was to embrace a quite different principle: that it is permissible to target the unborn child and intentionally terminate his or her life.
The Supreme Court heard no expert psychiatric evidence. Over the 20 years since the X case, the international research has shown a different reality: studies have been published that identify abortion as involving a significant increase in suicidal ideation and outcome.
The work of Dr David Fergusson and his colleagues in New Zealand in 2005 is perhaps the most striking example, especially since Fergusson’s own personal value position favours the “right to choose”. Fergusson noted the difficulty he had experienced in getting his research published.
Contrary to sustained misrepresentation by advocates of legalised abortion, the decision of the European Court of Human Rights does not require Ireland to give legislative effect to the Supreme Court decision of 20 years ago. What it does require is that we in Ireland choose a law that is clear.
We could, choose to endorse what the Supreme Court did but, if we took that course, we would be introducing into our hospitals an abortion regime, requiring abortion at all stages of pregnancy up to birth – the Supreme Court mentioned no time limits, in stark contrast to the notorious decision of the United States supreme court in Roe v Wade.
The Supreme Court decision represents injustice to the child, since it requires that his or her life be intentionally terminated. That abortion targets the child is a sad fact we should not ignore, however unpalatable it is to contemplate.
In England, some children – a small number – survive abortion. The Confidential Inquiry into Maternal and Child Health reported in 2007 that 66 babies had survived in one year. The policy in these cases is not to attempt to resuscitate them but rather to ensure that they die. That is not the policy of Irish hospitals but, if abortion was authorised on the principles set out in the Supreme Court decision, it would have to apply.
I do not believe that Irish people would wish to introduce a legal regime where the destruction of a child’s life was the object of the exercise.
We are free to make a different choice: one that ensures that Ireland can continue to be in the forefront of maternal safety and that does not target the child.
If the debate is about medicine, then Ireland, with its world class record on the care and safety of mothers during pregnancy, is a living example of how respect for human rights maximises positive outcomes.
But in truth the debate is really about values – not just about personal autonomy and privacy but about the dignity and equal worth of every human being. It is not easy to justify the intentional termination of the life of another human being, however small, powerless or undeveloped she or he may be. The insight of human rights philosophy is that, regardless of the estimation of others, every human being has inherent dignity and worth.
An unborn child is a distinct human being, with a unique identity different from that of his or her parents. He or she is no more or no less “a lump of cells” than a mature person.
Of course many (though not all) mature people lead lives of impressive intellectual and interpersonal fulfilment that bear no comparison with the experience or capacity of an infant in its mother’s womb or in the care of its parents in the years after birth. To build a lethal distinction on these differences in capacity and experience is not consistent with respect for the core values of human dignity and equal worth.
I hope that the expert group will take a broad view of its mandate and will guide the Government on the range of social supports that parents need in the awesome challenges that they may face in rearing the children who depend on their care.

Government Expert Group on Abortion

Will Rogers defined an expert as "A man fifty miles from home with a briefcase," that came to mind when I saw some of the names on the government Expert Group on Abortion the other day. I hope that they are sincere and that this is not used as a Trojan Horse to bring even "limited" abortion into Ireland. Abortion doesn't improve the health of women, it doesn't save their lives and it always destroys the life of the baby.
If they do recommend that we legislate for abortion the government does not have to accept their recommendations. Of course the fear is that Fine Gael TDs and senators, most of whom are pro-life, would be corralled by the Labour Party minority and forced into supporting legislation that they and a majority of the people in the country don't want. The Labour Party are pro-abortion, of that there is no doubt, you won't see them promoting that position very strongly but it is a very important issue for many of them, especially the deputy leader of the Seanad (and failed Dáil candidate) Senator Ivana Bacik and Anne Ferris TD.
Some soft pro-life Fine Gael TDs don't think they can fight the Labour Party on this issue and may hide behind recommendations of the Expert Group. I hope that on this issue the Fine Gael backbenchers get greater warning than they did on the closing of the Embassy to the Holy See (it cost too much money, though that would still be about 5% of the mission to the European Community). This is not a matter of money, this is a matter of life and death. Anyway Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro Life Campaign has expertise in this area far beyond my own.

 13th January 2012

Pro Life Campaign Says Expert Group on Abortion Presents Opportunity to Clarify Key Ethical Distinctions

The establishment by the Government of the Expert Group on abortion presents an opportunity to clarify important ethical distinctions in this area, the Pro Life Campaign (PLC) has said.
The Government this evening announced the members of the 14-member group from the medical, legal and nursing professions, in response to the A, B and C v. Ireland ruling on abortion from the European Court of Human Rights in 2010. The Expert Group will be chaired by Mr Justice Seán Ryan and has to report back to Government within six months with options on how to implement the judgment of the European Court.
In a statement responding to the announcement, spokesperson for the Pro Life Campaign, Dr Ruth Cullen said:
“The establishment of the expert group presents a genuine opportunity to re-affirm the ethical distinction between necessary medical interventions in pregnancy and induced abortion, which intentionally targets the life of the baby.
“Pro-choice activists are falsely claiming that Ireland is obliged to introduce abortion following the European Court of Human Rights decision. In reality, the court recognised the right of the Irish people to decide on the issue.
“It is also of critical importance that the new expert group take account of the latest peer-reviewed research, published in leading periodicals, which highlights the negative psychological effects of abortion for many women.”