REACTION:THE PRO-LIFE Campaign has called for a referendum on abortion in the wake of the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.
The campaign’s legal director, Prof William Binchy, said legislating on the basis of the 1992 Supreme Court ruling, which found terminating a pregnancy is lawful where the life of a mother is at risk, would be “folly” because that decision was based on “faulty medical understanding”.
“We have a choice between legislation and a referendum and our strong proposal is that we should have a referendum after due consideration,” he said.
“The Irish people must now consider this whole question of protection for unborn life and we can do one of two things. We can go on the lines of the Supreme Court and implement legislation based on a decision taken on faulty medical understanding or we can have a referendum which seeks to protect the unborn and back that up with legislation,” he added.
Prof Binchy said the ruling did not oblige the Government to legislate and that the court recognised that every state was entitled to formulate its own abortion policy.
“However, if a state does have grounds for abortion then the court says these grounds need to be clarified through legislation.
“We do not have legislation in this country and the argument that succeeded in the court was that in the absence of that legislation people would be in a situation where they would not know where they stood.” He said no woman died in Irish hospitals in circumstances arising out of concern for the protection of an unborn child.
Anti-abortion group Youth Defence described the ruling as “intrusive, unwelcome and an attempt to violate Ireland’s pro-life laws”. Spokeswoman Rebecca Roughneen said the judgment was “not surprising” given that the court had shown in previous rulings that it supported abortion.