Abortion in France gives Ireland the benefit of hindsight
Constitution Project @ UCC -
We are delighted to welcome this guest post on the issue of abortion from Dr Bénédicte Sage-Fuller, Faculty of Law, University College Cork and Dr Grégor Puppinck, European Centre for Law and Justice, Strasbourg, France.
Anyone who thinks that opening the door to restricted abortion can be kept to narrow and well intended cases should take a look at the French example. Legalised in 1975, abortion was at the time all about the dignity of women when facing a distressing situation. It was meant to be good for them and for society. Women needed to change the male-dominated country that France had been for centuries. After all, the right to vote was only fully recognised to women in 1944. France had never – and still has not ever –had a woman as head of State. Abortion was meant to help recognising women as full citizens. It was part of their full emancipation.
This is still very much the attitude. The belief that abortion is necessary for women is even legally defended. It is no longer a crime to incite someone to have an abortion, but it is a criminal act to protest or even talk publicly against abortion. On Monday 21st January 2013, a pro-life activist was before the courts. His protest was entirely non-violent, and yet he was charged with “having exercised psychological and moral pressure on women and trying to dissuade them from having an abortion”. He prayed outside an abortion hospital, and later walked inside and gave baby-size woollen boots to women considering having an abortion. He faces heavy fines and imprisonment. On the other hand, anyone who puts psychological or moral pressure on a young teenager or woman to have an abortion will not be prosecuted.
Of course in 1975 the legislation included strong safeguards, in order to care for and protect women making this choice. But 38 years on, the procedure is entirely liberalised. The safeguards have been reduced to virtually nothing. The law was changed to allow abortion up to 12 weeks, rather than the initial 10 weeks. The right for doctors and nurses to refuse to carry out an abortion is restricted. Public and subsidised private hospitals are not allowed to refuse to provide the procedure. Young underage girls no longer need to tell their parents, let alone obtain their consent. Compulsory pre-abortion counseling was made optional for adult women, with the result that by 2009 the vast majority of private abortion clinics and half of the public hospitals do not offer the service to women.
There is widespread recourse to medical rather than surgical abortion, where women take abortive pills in front of a nurse or doctor, and then go home. Having expulsed their foetuses alone in their bathroom, they must bring them back to the clinics so that a nurse can verify that the abortion is complete. No psychological support is offered during or after this harrowing time, which takes between 3 to 5 days. Women are alone and without any psychological support and, in the case of teenage girls, isolated even from their parents.
The number of abortions has risen to about 600 per day. There were 220,000 performed in 2012. One in four pregnancies is terminated. The biggest increase has been among underage teenage girls (+25% between 2002 and 2006). Yet, the French government makes no apologies. On the contrary, it decided in October 2012 to fully refund the procedure, with taxpayers’ money, deploring that French women do not have equal access to abortion services.
Read More: constitutionproject.ie
2013-03-22 19:19:25
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