Pro-choice lawyers: Repealing the 8th necessary to address fatal foetal anomaly

At a joint press conference with campaign group Together for Yes, leading legal professionals answered key legal questions relating to the Government’s proposals and the Eighth Amendment.

Barristers Peter Ward SC and Grainne Gilmore BL and Liam Herrick, executive director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), spoke following renewed media interest in the issue.

Ailbhe Smyth, co-director of Together for Yes, said: “We are holding this event with Lawyers for Yes to address some of the key legal questions voters have around the Eighth Amendment.

“It’s very important that voters are given clear, correct information about repealing the 8th and the proposed government legislation before they go to the polls 25th May.”

Mr Ward said: “We’ve had the 8th Amendment for 35 years. It has resulted in absolute legal paralysis in dealing with crisis pregnancies.

“There is a legal paralysis in attempting to tackle the health crisis that women face in pregnancy and we have seen in all of the cases that have been thrown up by reason of the presence of the 8th Amendment how unresponsive our Irish law is to the needs of Irish women, by virtue of its presence.

“The lawyers who are saying ‘retain the Eighth’ want to keep that provision that prevents any intervention in a situation where a couple get a diagnosis of Fatal Foetal Abnormality. They say keep that provision whereby a pregnant victim of rape or incest is required to take that child to full term. And in respect of the health issue around crisis pregnancies, they are saying keep the threshold at imminent death – that only if there is an imminent risk that that woman will die that you can intervene to terminate that pregnancy.”

Ms Gilmore said the Eighth Amendment had “proven itself to be a failed legal experiment” and an outlier among global constitutions.

She said: “The absolutist, inflexible and extreme language of this provision means its application has resulted in cruel outcomes which must surely go beyond what was envisaged by voters in 1983.”

Mr Herrick told the press conference that the ICCL “supports the Government’s proposed position is based on a careful consideration of Irish and international experience of how the law engages with issues of abortion, pregnancy and women’s health”.