The Government’s proposals to legislate for
terminations would give some unborn children less protection than is
guaranteed under liberal abortion laws in other countries, the Catholic
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.
In his first public intervention in the
abortion debate, Dr Martin has expressed particular concern about one
aspect of the Government’s plans to legislate for abortion where there
is a threat to the life of the mother because of the threat of suicide.
In a letter to
The Irish Times
, he says his concern relates to situations where the unborn
child is viable at the time a termination is being considered.
He says his anxiety is that it would be
permissible for doctors to certify that the medical procedure necessary
to avert the risk to the woman’s life consisted of the “termination of
her pregnancy”.
This could happen in such a manner that would bring an
end to the life of the unborn before delivery at a stage when the child
would be delivered alive if a different method of termination were used.
The only medical treatment in line with the
constitutional protection of such an unborn child would be one in which
the child was safely delivered, he said.
Reliance on a “destructive
abortion” in such a situation would be in patent contrast to the meaning
of article 40.3.3 of the Constitution.
He concluded: “There is a growing impression
that the judgment of the X-case ‘is the Constitution’. I believe that it
is an interpretation given in a specific case which does not supersede
or relativise the clear constitutional right to equal protection for
unborn life in the circumstances which I have outlined. Indeed under
Head 4 it would give the life of such an unborn child less protection
than is guaranteed in liberal abortion laws in other countries.”