A, B & C vs Ireland: Should Ireland Be Excluded From The EU?

The question of whether or not Ireland should be kicked out of the EU because of the entitled case cannot be answered by a simple yes or no as it brings up two questions with seemingly conflicting answers, namely; what exactly are the reproductive rights of the mothers and what rights to life does an unborn foetus have.

Reproductive Rights

In the case of A, B & C v Ireland, the mothers claim was that the laws of Oreland contravened their reproductive rights as expressed by the WHO as:

“Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence.”

As which, A,B & C argue that in enforcing anti-abortion laws, Ireland has negated their right “to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children."(Proclamation of Teheran 1968). However, reproductive rights as stated by the WHO and the Teheran proclamation are non-binding agreements which and many of the articles are yet to be recognized in hard-law hard. To complicate matters more, the European Convention on Human Rights is silent on the question of reproductive rights

Right to Life

All member states of the EU have to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights to in order to maintain their membership with the EU, and this is where Reproductive Rights clash with the Article 2 in that document, The Right to Life. Many Pro-lifers argue that the act of aborting a pregnancy constitutes a negation of the foetuses right to life. However, most pro-lifers rest their argument on a religious or philosophical definition of when a human is defined as a being a human; they consider as soon as a woman’s pregnant, the collection of fertilised cells that make up the embryo is already human thus Article 2 applies at the moment of conception. The pro-abortion lobby on the other hand argue that a human can only be considered a human upon delivery.

When is a Human, Human?

So when does Article 2 apply to an individual? When is a foetus recognised as being human? As I mentioned earlier, most pro-lifers take the religious high ground and base their arguments on 2,000-year-old religious dogma, but it seems unwise to base such an important definition on something that essentially has no factual backing. At the same time studies have shown that foetuses in towards the end of their third trimester actually experience REM sleep (Schwab & Schiller 2009), meaning they dream and is not dreaming indicative of consciousness? Descartes posited, “I think therefore I am” in his “Discourse on Method” (1637) when he was discussing the proof of self-existence so perhaps in can further be expanded to define when a human can be considered human. Meaning, that if thinking about your existence acknowledges that you do in fact exist, your existence is based on the fact that you thought about it thus thought or the act of thinking defines your humanity. So perhaps, in order for us to adequately determine when Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights applies, you would have to determine when brain activity, or thought, occurs in the foetus.

Conclusion

To conclude, since reproductive rights aren’t enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, technically, Ireland is not at fault for denying its citizen’s the right to abort unwanted pregnancies. However, it is disconcerting that reproductive rights aren’t discussed in the document, since this means that European states technically could be as draconian as China in regards to reproduction.

My opinion is that it is uncertain on whether or not A, B and C’s rights were abused as not enough information as given on each of their cases, e.g. How long were they into their pregnancies? How did they become pregnant to begin with? What were their reasons for wanting an abortion? These questions matter when discussing abortion rights for though I’m not a pro-lifer since I do believe women have the right to decide what happens in their bodies, I also believe that the right of the foetus to live also has to be taken into consideration. A common consensus has to be reached on when humanity occurs in a foetus. This consensus however must be based on provable facts and not ideological nor religious suppositions or philosophical debate.