AFAIK the Republic of Ireland prevents any of its citizens (well, as long as they’re pregnant women, obviously :rolleyes: ) from travelling outside the country to have an abortion. In this case it seems a little much.
I was following it on the news and wanted to mention it somewhere. Stopping someone from doing something the government has deemed illegal is one thing, but stopping them from travelling somewhere it is legal seems a bit much somehow.
This happened a few years ago too - an incest case too. Can’t find a cite. It stinks.
Here we go: The ‘X’ Case (a rather poorly written and incomplete Wiki article I’m afraid). In that case in 1992 it was deemed, after a lot of protest, that ‘X’, a 14-year-old who had been raped - could leave the country as her life was in danger - from suicide.
Thousands of adult women travel from Ireland to Britain every year for abortions. I think, though Irish dopers might want to correct me, the case here is that the girl in question is not an adult, as was ‘X’.
ETA: Here’s a better article about the X Case, that shows that my supposition in the last paragraph above is in fact wrong.
This is completely wrong. Far from the state preventing its citizens from travelling abroad to obtain an abortion, there is an explicit constitutional provision which says that the constitutional prohibition on abortion in Ireland is not to prevent someone from travelling abroad for an abortion and, as already pointed out, many people do precisely this, with no attempt to prevent them.
The important point in this case is not just that the person concerned is a minor (the applicant in the ‘X’ case, to which Jimm has linked was also a minor, and the court ruled in her favour) but that she is a minor in the care of the state. The issue is whether the relevant state agency, which has effective parental responsiblity for her, can approve of this. She cannot travel without their permission, but that is not because she is pregnant, or beause she is a woman, or because she is a girl. It is because she is in care. The question is not what the girl can do, but what the childcare authority can do.
You may have strong views on whether a childcare authority should be required to prevent her from having an abortion - I do myself - but the header “Republic of Ireland stops woman from travelling for an abortion” is a bit misleading when the case has yet to be decided. The court may very well rule that the childcare authority can approve of this.
Indeed, my bad :o I browsed a bit more after posting and found that the thirteenth amendment of the constitution of the Republic of Ireland prevented such a thing happening.