Always and Never: IFPA response to the Green Paper on Abortion

1.1.1 The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) welcomes publication of the Green Paper on Abortion and endorses the efforts of its authors to provide a calm and rational context in which this issue can be discussed.

1.1.2 The IFPA welcomes the call for further submissions, by the All Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, as part of the process of determining how to proceed to resolution. We recognise that the committee will have a challenging task and wish all its members well as they undertake their potentially onerous duties.
1.2 IFPA Credentials

1.21 The IFPA is a national voluntary organisation and recognised charity which was founded in 1969. The Association's founders desired to change the appalling health and social circumstances in which many families in Ireland lived and, in particular, the health consequences for mothers and their children of repeated pregnancies.
1.2.2 The primary aim of the IFPA's founder members was to alter the social and legal environment in Ireland so that information and services, regarding all methods of family planning, were accessible to everyone. Over the past 30 years the aims and objectives of the Association have broadened and developed. The IFPA remains fundamentally committed to ensuring that all persons have access to the method of contraception which is most suitable to their individual and particular needs. However, this commitment is now part of a broader policy to promote and protect the individual basic human rights of all persons within the context of their reproductive and sexual health, their relationships and their sexuality. In 1969 the IFPA opened its first clinic. Now it has three large medical centres and six additional counselling centres. Initially the IFPA provided contraceptive services, and now it provides a comprehensive range of sexual and reproductive health services, including pregnancy counselling. Through the provision and development of its services and through its advocacy activities, the Association is acutely aware of the myriad difficulties which can affect any person in their reproductive health and, in particular, women faced with crisis pregnancy.

1.2.3 The IFPA has a number of key relationships with the state sector both as a service provider and as an adviser on sexual and reproductive health matters.

1.2.4 The IFPA has a particular focus on the educational, information and service needs of young people and has a large base of younger people among its clients and members. The IFPA conducts research and provides services specifically related to the needs of young people.

1.2.5 The IFPA makes this submission on the basis of more than 30 years of first hand and unrivalled experience in the field of reproductive health and crisis pregnancy in Ireland.

1.2.6 The IFPA is anxious to assist the committee to find a mechanism by which the hitherto intractable issue of elective termination of pregnancy can now be resolved, and is happy to provide such further documentation, information or advice as may be requested by the Committee.
Scope of Submission

2.1 This submission recognises that the Government's Working Group has already considered, at great length, the various conflicting submissions made to it, which set out the moral, political and legal arguments in support of the various alternative viewpoints on this issue. It is not our intention to re-state the submission which the IFPA made to that Group, since the product of that Group's work (the Green Paper) should now be the focus of this discussion.

2.2 We respectfully submit that the Committee should not now allow itself to be drawn into any re-working of the Green Paper. We believe that your key task is not to ponder the moral and other issues associated with Irish abortion or to attempt to determine the ultimate outcome of this process; the IFPA submits that it is your primary task to deliver a framework which will enable either the Oireachtas or the people or both to make a democratic decision capable of resolving the issue. This will require courage, imagination, clarity of thought and a willingness to critically assess the process which brought us to our current position.

2.3 We particularly hope that the Committee will assist the nation to come to terms with the fact that, whatever abortion is, it is not an issue that can easily be dealt with by simply ticking the YES or NO box on a ballot form, or by the tortuous and tautological construction of new forms of constitutional wording. We hope you will create the conditions in which we can all consider both the realities and the central political or moral choices. We should not allow ourselves to be trapped into discussing competing forms of words in place of the actual issue, as has happened before.

2.4 We are compelled to express our disappointment that the Green Paper has so little to say on measures that could and should be taken immediately to address the underlying issue of unplanned pregnancy. We do this in the strongest of terms. The IFPA regrets to note that once again the government has allowed the blinding light of the abortion 'debate' to distract it from taking concrete measures to minimise unplanned pregnancy in the state. The Committee would do great service by spurring the government to action in this respect, even before beginning an examination of the legislative and constitutional options. In the absence of concerted action we suggest that there will be at least 100,000 Irish abortions by 2010.

2.5 Official UK figures indicate that in the time since the establishment of the Working Group on Abortion there have been at least 11,500 Irish abortions, while since the X case there appear to have been at least 39,000 Irish abortions. Both figures may be substantially understated.

2.6 This submission responds to the options set out in Chapter 7 of the Green Paper. Copies of our submission to the Working Group, Facing Up To Reality, are being made available with this submission as reference documents.

2.7 Throughout this submission the terms abortion, elective termination of pregnancy or elective termination or termination are used to refer to any medical intervention designed to bring about a (non-spontaneous) induced miscarriage, before the foetus achieves capacity for independent life.

2.8 Throughout this submission the term unborn is used in the context of its inclusion in Article 40.3.3 of Bunreacht Na hEireann. It should be noted that this is an undefined term which originated in the United States and was inserted in to the Irish Constitution in 1983, without elaboration. This section of this submission discusses each of the options (i - vii) set out for consideration in the Green Paper. This discussion seeks to compare and contrast each of the options in terms of their relationship to other options, their relevance to the daily reality of Irish abortion and their effective capacity to contribute to a political resolution of the issues raised.