HISTORY OF ABORTION
Key Dates in History of Abortion
Mapping The Key Dates for the ABORTION Debate in Ireland
1861: Abortion, always an offence, is made a “criminal offence” in Ireland and Britain under the Offences Against the Person Act, Sections 58 and 59.
1921: With the ending of the War of Independence in 1921 and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Irish law became independent of British law.
1938: The Bourne Case. The illegality of abortion in Britain remained basically unchanged until the 1938 Bourne Case. The judge declared that a doctor could perform an abortion lawfully if he believed it was necessary to save the mother’s life or that she would become a “physical or mental wreck” if the pregnancy continued. Doctors in Britain used this ruling as a justification for “lawful abortions” up to 1967.
The Bourne Case had no effect on the law of the Irish Free State and the 1861 Act remained the law in Ireland. Abortion in any form was illegal and doctors supported the law.
1967: The Abortion Act defined a “lawful abortion” under six separate headings, and replaced the Bourne case in the UK. The new law was proposed as a Private Member’s bill by David Steel, while both major British parties chose to remain neutral. Although the law’s promoters assured the public that the law would be strictly enforced and the number of abortions would remain small, neither of these things happened. This law has led to the present abortion on demand culture.
1973: In the Roe v Wade case in the USA, the Supreme Court declared the decision to have an abortion was protected by the right to privacy, and all laws forbidding or limiting the exercise of that right were unconstitutional.
1983: The people of Ireland voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to protect the life of the country’s unborn children. The Irish Constitution was amended by Article 40.3.3, also known as the pro-life amendment. The wording is as follows:
The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.
1991: Ireland signed the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht, and received a legal guarantee that its pro-life laws will not be affected by any future European law.
1992: In 1992 the judges of the High and Supreme Courts were faced with the case of a minor – referred to only as X . The girl had been made pregnant by an adult friend, and threatened to kill herself if she did not get an abortion. Counsel for X argued that the 1983 Amendment did not exclude all abortions.
Four judges of the Supreme Court agreed that under the 1983 Amendment Miss X could abort her unborn child. The Supreme Court’s decision placed a serious contradiction in Irish law that remains today. Significantly, the Dáil could pass legislation permitting abortion in certain cases. This would negate the peoples’ democratic decision in the referendum of 1983.
1992: In December of the same year the Government proposed three referenda to the electorate. The people voted to establish the right to travel and the right to information but for a number of reasons defeated the proposal to permit abortion in limited circumstances.
1997: In November, a 13 year-old traveller girl was found to be pregnant as a result of rape two months earlier. The girl had been taken into the care of the Eastern Health Board. The Eastern Health Board pushed for an abortion despite the disagreement of her parents and their efforts to regain custody of the child. A judge of a district court permitted the Eastern Health Board to arrange the abortion, and a judge of the High Court supported her decision in a judicial review. The cost of the abortion was paid out of taxpayers’ funds.
1998: The Irish Government establish an Inter-Departmental Working Group on Abortion to conduct a public consultation on all aspects of abortion. It received over 10,000 replies, the vast majority of them against any legalisation of abortion.
1999: The government published the Green Paper on Abortion.
2000: The All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution held public hearings on how a government might legislate on abortion. It heard opinions from a wide variety of groups and individuals. In its Fifth Progress Report the Committee proposed three different solutions, roughly corresponding to the positions of the three main political parties in Ireland.
2002: The government put the 25th Amendment before the people in a national referendum. The object of the amendment was“…[To] legislate to protect best medical practice, while providing for a prohibition on abortion….”, and followed one of the solutions proposed in the Fifth Progress Report.
On March 6, 2002, the referendum for the protection of the unborn life was defeated by less than 1% of the votes cast — 10,556 votes.
We are therefore still at the situation where we need to restore constitutional protection for unborn babies. As a result of the 1992 Supreme Court decision, abortion was legalised in uncertain terms — even up to birth.