Foreign Affairs

Ireland Voted To Legalize Abortion, But It Still Has Many Details To Lock Down

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Ireland voted May 26 to legalize abortion, but the Catholic-majority country’s lawmakers haven’t solidified details that will put the law into effect, which has been exasperated by a lack of doctors willing and trained to perform abortions.

“There’s been no clinical lead appointments. There’s been no technical round tables established. There’s been effectively no meetings held,” Doctors For Choice founder Dr. Mary Favier told The Irish Times. No clear standards have been set for safety procedures, distance quotas between abortion facilities and hospitals, and parental consent laws among other legislative measures to regulate abortion.

The plan to implement Ireland’s law permitting abortion has been “a shambles,” Favier also said.

Irish general practitioner Mike Thompson told BBC that January 2019 is an ambitious deadline, considering there are no “clear and robust guidelines” on abortion provision thus far.

“It has to be safe,” he told BBC.

No abortion laws have been passed since the country voted for its legalization over four months ago, but Ireland’s Health Minister Simon Harris did tweet Thursday about introducing laws to regulate abortion in the nation.

About to introduce legislation on termination of pregnancy in the Dáil now. 35 years on from the insertion of the 8th amendment into our constitution. It is now gone. Time to modernise our laws and care for women

— Simon Harris TD (@SimonHarrisTD) October 4, 2018

Harris also welcomed Dr. Peter Boylan, who will assist the government in crafting abortion policy.

The government introduced the “Regulation of the Termination of Pregnancy Bill,” which allows women to demand abortion services up until 12 weeks in pregnancy. The bill also allows women to abort past 12 weeks gestation in cases where continuing the pregnancy would put the prospective mother’s life in danger or where the fetus will not survive after birth.

Ireland’s prime minister Leo Varadkar and Harris have said they expect free abortion services to be fully operational by 2019, but a number of necessary codes have yet to be passed.

Hundreds of doctors object to the requirement that they provide abortion.

“We don’t want to thwart the referendum result, we’re just asking that we’re given freedom of conscience in the truest form where we don’t have to refer to another doctor,” said Doctors for Freedom of Conscience spokesperson, Dr. Kirsten Fuller. “Abortion is the ending of a human life and we don’t want to partake in that in any sense.”

Irish doctors may individually object to providing abortions, but Catholic hospitals in the country will not be able to refuse abortion provision as a whole.

Ireland was one of the last European countries banning abortion until it repealed its Eighth Amendment on May 26. Northern Ireland, however, operates under a different governing body than the rest of Ireland, and abortion remains illegal in the region.

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