Still restrictive

摘要

The Irish Supreme Court ruled 21 years ago that abortion was legal if the risk that pregnancy might prompt suicide put the life of a woman in grave danger. The case involved a sexually abused and suicidal teenager whom the lower courts stopped from travelling to England for an abortion, a decision the Supreme Court reversed. Yet successive governments ignored the court's decision. Ireland still has one of the rich world's most restrictive abortion regimes. Every year over 4,000 Irish women go to Britain to terminate their pregnancies: a British solution to an Irish problem.Three years ago, however, the European Court of Human Rights embarrassed the politicians into taking action by calling on Ireland to clarify its abortion law. More recently, the debate was reignited by an international outcry when an Indian-born dentist died in a Galway hospital after a miscarriage, despite her repeated requests for an abortion.