The case resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that terminations should be lawful when a woman's life is in danger or she is at risk of suicide.
Despite the 1992 ruling, no legislation has been introduced to allow abortion to protect the mother's life.
An estimated 4,200 women travel from the Republic to Britain and other European countries each year to end a pregnancy.
Abortion was outlawed in 1861 and over the last 30 years there have been three referendums on what is one of the most contentious issues in Irish society.
In 1983 voters backed proposals to recognise that a mother and unborn child have equal right to life and since 2002 women have had the right to travel outside the state for a termination and the right to information on abortion, following other votes.
The issue sparked further debate this year when four women went public with harrowing stories of how they travelled abroad for a termination following diagnoses of fatal foetal abnormalities.
Now the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar, 31, has again triggered controversy.
Coincidentally, a 14-member expert group last night reported back to Health Minister James Reilly on the X Case and the implications of a 2010 European Court of Human Rights ruling on Irish abortion law, which found the state violated the rights of a woman with cancer who was forced to travel abroad to terminate her pregnancy.
The X Case centred on a 14-year-old girl who had been raped and became pregnant.
The Attorney General asked the courts to impose a travel ban on the teenager which the
Supreme Court later overturned because of her suicide risk.
The girl had a miscarriage before she was able to have the pregnancy terminated.
To coincide with the February anniversary of the case, left-wing TDs in the Dail parliament, Clare Daly, Joan Collins and Mick Wallace, put forward a Private Members' Bill to finally legislate on the X Case.
It was rejected by 109 votes to 20, with Labour TDs among those to vote against it despite the party's pro-choice stance.
Meanwhile, the North's first private abortion clinic opened in Belfast in October.