by Christina Zampas

On January 29, 2018, the Irish government announced that it will hold a referendum on the provision of the Constitutions which limits abortion access.  In deciding this, it took into consideration the recommendations issued on December 20 by the  Joint Committee of the Irish Parliament (the Oireachtas).

Ireland has one of the most restrictive abortion law regimes in the world, only allowing abortion in cases of risk to a woman’s life. The Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution was formed to review the  Citizens’ Assembly recommendations calling for constitutional reform of Article 40.3.3 (the Eighth Amendment) which guarantees an equal right to life of the “unborn” as to a pregnant woman.   The Eighth Amendment was inserted in the Constitution in 1983, after a bitterly contested referendum.  The intent of the Amendment was to halt the wave of liberalization of European and US abortion laws from hitting Ireland. An Amnesty International report shows how the Eighth Amendment fundamentally shaped the restrictive scope and content of Ireland’s abortion law and the quality of care received by all pregnant women and girls, not just women seeking abortion.

For three months in autumn, 2017, the Joint Committee assessed the Citizens’ Assembly recommendations and heard from scores of witnesses, including myself. I provided expert testimony on the impact of the Eighth Amendment on women and girls, the human rights violations resulting from such a draconian legal framework, and the practical reality that thousands of women from Ireland are accessing abortion either by travelling overseas or purchasing the abortion pill online.  As a result of this process, the Joint Committee recommended repeal of the Eighth Amendment, to align Ireland’s abortion law with human rights obligations and the laws of other European countries.  These recommendations will also guide the government in drafting a referendum proposal that will go to the people.

The Joint Committee’s recommendations include ensuring abortion on request in the first 12 weeks of gestation, and beyond 12 weeks for fatal fetal impairment, life and health, including mental and physical health.  They recognized that medical decisions are best made in a clinical setting, not by a legislature.  While most recommendations align with women’s and girls’ health care needs, human rights norms and the laws of other European countries, others do not–such as recommendations which do not recognize the need to allow on abortion on grounds of rape beyond 12 weeks gestation and which explicitly disallow abortion on grounds of severe fetal impairment.

The Joint Committee also made important ancillary recommendations which would prevent unwanted pregnancies and ensure quality of care to all pregnant women.  They include decriminalization of abortion (to reduce the chilling and stigmatic effect that criminal law has on provision of health care to all pregnant women), robust, evidence-based sex education, free access to contraception, equal access to high standards of obstetric care regardless of geography or socio-economic status, and improvements to counselling and support facilities surrounding pregnancy and abortion.

The government. in announcing the referendum. decided wording that effectively repeals the Eighth Amendment. It also announced that Minister for Health will prepare legislation in line with the Joint Oireachtas Committee’s recommendations on abortion access, which includes a 12-week “on request” period for abortion access.

This is a significant step for Ireland, where the abortion debate raged for decades with little government response until 2012, when the tragic and unnecessary death of Savita Continue reading →

We are pleased to welcome Christina Zampas, an international human rights lawyer with extensive experience managing projects on law reform, litigation and training.  Her scholarship and advocacy focus on UN and regional human rights law, particularly on sexual and reproductive rights. She is currently an independent consultant based in Geneva working for various UN agencies and NGOs. She is also a Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Fellow in the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.

Zampas has worked at Amnesty International as Senior Legal Advisor, the Center for Reproductive Rights as Regional Director for Europe, and at Parliamentarians for Global Action as Project Director for its work in West African parliaments.  She has been a Practitioner-in Residence at University of Miami Law School Human Rights Clinic and a Visiting Lecturer in Russian university law faculties with Yale University and Open Society Foundations. She has done consultancy work for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), UNAIDS, UNFPA and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Zampas has conducted advocacy at various UN and regional human rights bodies and in national parliaments and ministries. She has led major research missions documenting human rights violations related to abortion, forced sterilization, and sex work.  She has litigated and filed amicus briefs in groundbreaking cases before the European Court of Human Rights, the European Social Charter, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and at UN Treaty Monitoring Bodies.  She is also a co-founder of the Women’s Human Rights Training Institute (WHRTI), in Bulgaria, the first training program for lawyers from Central and Eastern Europe on using international and regional human rights mechanisms to seek redress for violations of women’s rights.

Many thanks to Mercedes Cavallo, doctoral candidate in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, and a Reproductive Health Law Fellow,  for analyzing these two important cases:

On October 18, 2017, the Irish Oireachtas (Parliamentary) Joint Committee on Abortion recommended 15-2-2 not to fully retain the Eighth Amendment restrictions on abortion.

Irish abortion laws are among the most restrictive in the world and have been condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee in the cases of Whelan v. Ireland and Mellet v. Ireland.  Under the Irish Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court of Ireland in Attorney General v. X and Others, abortion is a crime and is only permissible when it is established, as a matter of probability, that there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as distinct from the health, of the pregnant woman.

In addition, the “Abortion Information Act” 1995 restricts circumstances in which individuals (including health professionals) can provide information about legal abortion services in Ireland or abroad, and criminalizes “advocating or promoting” the termination of pregnancy.  Due to the constraints of this legal framework, women who need abortions in Ireland usually travel to the United Kingdom, with little information and no financial or psychological support from the State.

In the Whelan and Mellet. cases, the UN’s Human Rights Committee found Ireland non-compliant in denying abortion services and grief counselling to two women who had each been pregnant with a doomed foetus.

Siobhán Whelan, at 20 weeks pregnant, was informed that her foetus had a congenital malformation and would likely die in utero, during labor, or soon after birth. Her obstetrician mentioned that “in another jurisdiction [she] would be offered a termination but obviously not in this country due to Irish law.” The obstetrician expected Ms. Whelan to “continue with the pregnancy, attend ante-natal appointments ‘as normal’ and wait for nature to take its course.” Another doctor gave her a report of the scan, “in case [she] wanted to travel.”  She sought further information about travel, but most agencies could only assist women who were less than 13 weeks pregnant, so she learned about the Liverpool Women’s Hospital through a friend. At significant expense, she arranged babysitting, leave from work and farm relief.  Afterwards, she felt very isolated, and suffers from complicated grief and trauma.

Amanda Jane Mellet was 21 weeks pregnant when she was told that her foetus had congenital defects and would die in utero or shortly after birth.  Hospital staff said only Continue reading →

We are pleased to welcome Mercedes Cavallo, an S.J.D. student at the University of Toronto.  For her doctoral thesis, she researches the legal construction of spatial and temporal scales from a legal geography perspective — particularly, how the different laws in the context of Buenos Aires, Argentina, unfold childcare in the private space and time of the household, shaping women’s inequality.

Cavallo received her LL.B. in 2007 (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina), her LL.M. in Reproductive and Sexual Health Law in 2009 (University of Toronto, Canada), her Diploma in Women and Human Rights in 2011 (Universidad de Chile), and her Specialization in Criminal Law in 2016 (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina).   From 2014 to 2016, she was an Adjunct Professor in Argentina: first in the Universidad de Palermo, where she taught “Jurisprudence” and later in Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, where she taught “Introduction to Argentine Constitutional Law” and “Gender and the Criminal Law”.  She has also served as Court Clerk at the Federal Supreme Court of Argentina, Director of the Socio-Economic Rights Program at Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (Association for Civil Rights, Argentina), and Court Secretary at the 4th National Court on Federal Criminal Law in the City of Buenos Aires. (Argentina) before returning to the University of Toronto for doctoral studies in 2016.