Editor’s note. This update comes from our friends at Familyandlife.org.
As one team of pro-abortion Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)–IFPA and Abortion Rights Campaign–were in Geneva urging a UN committee to pressure Ireland to introduce more abortion, another was launching a new pro-abortion campaign at home. Amnesty Ireland, which has become one of Ireland’s leading pro-abortion groups in recent years, held an event in Dublin to promote its latest effort to remove all restrictions on abortion in Ireland.
Among those at the launch to speak in support of Amnesty’s campaign was Dr. Rhona Mahony, Master of the National Maternity Hospital. Amnesty’s publication, “She Is Not A Criminal: The impact of Ireland’s abortion law,” claims that the remaining restrictions on abortion in Ireland and, in particular, the recognition of the right to life of the unborn in the Constitution, “violate the human rights of women and girls.”
It accuses Ireland of not complying with its international human rights obligations, and claims the rights of women and girls here to life, health, equality, non-discrimination, privacy, information, and, freedom from torture and other degrading treatment are all being violated.
Amnesty’s claims were so outrageous that even The Irish Times, which is generally supportive of Amnesty’s aims, disputed them in an editorial. While Amnesty claims that Ireland is under a legal obligation to change its abortion law, the Irish Times points out that a “right” to abortion has never been “explicitly upheld by an international court or agreed by covenant.”
The launch of the Amnesty campaign coincided with the release of the latest UK data on Irish women traveling to Britain for abortions.
Figures released by the Department of Health in London show that the number of Irish women having abortions in England and Wales increased slightly in 2014, to 3,735 from 3,679 in 2013. This represents 3.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44. The rate for women living in England and Wales is almost five times greater. In numerical terms the 2014 figure still represents a 43 per cent drop from the 2001 peak.
Almost 98 per cent of all the 190,092 abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2014 were permitted on mental health grounds, effectively abortion on demand, which is what Amnesty wants to see in Ireland.