Michael Kelly“Miss Y’s case is a heart-breaking one, but the facts are clear: she is alive”, writes Michael Kelly
It is difficult to understand the nature of the legal advice being given to the woman known as ‘Miss Y’, who is reportedly to issue personal injury proceedings against 11 named respondents including a doctor, two hospitals, and the Health Service Executive (HSE).
It was reported some months ago that Miss Y, an asylum seeker who was refused an abortion in 2014 after claiming to have been raped in her home country, was alleging personal injury while in the care of these agencies and claiming that the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act 2013 should have been invoked far earlier in her case than it was so her pregnancy could have been terminated earlier.
If newspaper reports of interviews with Miss Y are accurate, she claims that the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) told her that “people like me are sent to England for abortions” but was allegedly misinformed that there was no time pressure since in Britain, she was reportedly told, “they carry out abortions up to 28 weeks”. England’s time limit for abortions, save on very specific grounds, is 24 weeks; it has not been 28 weeks since 1990.
It is hard to see that anyone could claim that the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act 2013 should have been invoked earlier in this case, if at all. It’s too often claimed that the 2013 act, like the 1992 ‘X’ judgement, entitles suicidal women to have abortions. Too often a linchpin of pro-choice arguments for dismantling Ireland’s safeguards for unborn children, this claim utterly misrepresents both judgement and act (flawed as they are).
Irish law allows for terminations of pregnancy – an imprecise term, covering both abortions and elective premature deliveries – only when three doctors have certified that there is “a real and substantial risk of loss of the woman’s life by way of suicide”, which they believe “can only be averted by a termination of pregnancy”, making this decision with an eye to “the need to preserve unborn human life as far as practicable”.
In other words, the law as written allows for terminations of pregnancy only when there is no other way of saving a woman from suicide, and for abortions only when termination of pregnancy by premature delivery is not an option.
Miss Y’s case is a heart-breaking one, but the facts are clear: she is alive, and is alive without having needed an abortion. Her baby son will be 14 months old on October 6.
These are facts that the pro-choice lobby are unwilling to face.
