Peter Boylan is wrong about abortion rates going down when law liberalised

Two doctors, one of them being Peter Boylan, told the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment last week that when a country’s abortion law is liberalised, abortion rates decline. This is not true.

Abortion rates and trends vary considerably by geographic region. In discussing Ireland, we should look at countries that are socially and culturally closer to us and base our expectations on what happened there.

In his presentation to the Oireachtas Committee, professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran said: “In countries where abortion is legalised, the total abortion rates and maternal mortality have declined due to safe post-abortion care and post-abortion contraception.”

Dr. Peter Boylan added “I agree with Professor Arulkumaran that all the evidence is that the rate of termination comes down once more liberalised legislation is introduced for all of the obvious reasons.”

This might true in some developing countries but in Western countries there are plenty of examples that show the opposite.

Let’s consider our neighbours. In England and Wales following liberalisation of the law in 1967, abortion rates grew enormously as the chart below shows.

Source: UK Department of Health, accessible here.

The same happened in Scotland. Rates jumped enormously at the time of liberalisation.

Source: NHS National Services Scotland, accessible here.

The Netherlands is a country that is often presented by pro-choice advocates as a good example in term of abortion rates, sexual education and access to contraception.

Dr. Meabh Ní Bhuinneáin, answering a questions after her presentation, claimed that the Netherlands is one of those countries “where abortion rates have fallen.”

That is not correct. Quite the opposite, in the last 15 years the abortion rate has gone up, according to the official report.

Source: Minister of Health, accessible here.

Abortions rates are falling in some countries, for a variety of reasons, but not because of a more liberal regime. No country with liberal laws has an abortion rate lower than countries such Ireland, Poland and Malta, which have restrictive laws. (I have covered this topic here).

It is not the first time Dr Boylan makes incorrect claims about abortion statistics.

For instance, in a recent interview with Eamon Dunphy that you can listen here he said: “The interesting thing is that in countries that we regard perhaps as the most liberal legislation, places like Denmark and the Netherlands, they have extremely low rates of termination by comparison with the instances that you have mentioned.” He and Eamon Dunphy had been discussing Britain and the United States.

The percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion is actually higher in Denmark than in Britain or in the United States. Here you can find a comprehensive comparative table.

Denmark, as other Northern countries like Sweden or Norway, provides the kind of sexual education and access to contraception that pro-choice advocates favour and still has higher abortion rates than Italy, Portugal, Germany or Switzerland. The Scandinavian countries can be hardly taken as good examples.

These doctors need to revise their claim that liberalisation of the law leads to lower abortion rates when the facts show something very different.

Masters of two main maternity hospitals want law to permit abortion of disabled babies

The Masters of the two biggest maternity hospitals in the country have both declared their support for abortion where a child suffers either from a fatal or a non-fatal foetal abnormality. If implemented, this would mean that unborn children suffering from conditions such as Down Syndrome could be aborted in Irish hospitals.

In the UK, 90pc of babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted.

The two Masters were Professor Fergal Malone of the Rotunda Hospital Dublin, and Dr Rhona Mahony of the National Maternity Hospital. Last week they appeared before the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment.

Professor Malone doesn’t want any limits placed on the type of foetal abnormalities that can lead to abortion, or any limits placed on the point in the pregnancy when an abortion for such conditions can take place. He wants abortion in this context decriminalised.

He told the committee: “Obstetricians and maternity hospitals in Ireland should be able to provide for a legal termination of pregnancy in the setting of fatal or complex foetal abnormalities if a patient chooses to follow that course of action.”

He said it would not be appropriate to provide a list of spe­cific foetal diagnoses that should be considered “eligible” for an abortion but, instead, that “the individuals best placed to make such a decision are the patient and her doctor, without the direct involvement of external agencies”.

Moreover, he did not consider it appropriate to specify a precise gestational age limit in weeks beyond which a pregnancy termination would be illegal because, he said, the definition of foetal viabil­ity is not precise and is likely to change. According to him, the mother and her doctor only should make such a decision, without a legal cut-off.

This practically means abortion on request for any foetal abnormality, without gestational age limit. One couldn’t think of a more liberal regime.

Fine Gael Deputy Peter Fitzpatrick found it “disturbing that the witness refers to the abortion procedure as ‘care’ as it is certainly not care.”  He noted that: “what is meant by ‘care’ is a proce­dure that would lead to the ending of a baby’s life”. He asked at what point it is decided that the baby is no longer the patient. In answering this question Professor Malone continued to refer only to the mother as “the patient”, never mentioning the other patient, namely the unborn child.

Dr Mahony also supported decriminalisation. She didn’t specify on what grounds but quoted without any qualification the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in the UK which recently voted by a large margin in favour of removing criminal sanctions that still cover some abortions in Britain, for example, late term abortions except in cases of disability.

She claimed that an error in clinical judgement regarding the real and substantial risk to the life of a woman, which would qualify for a legal abortion in Ireland, is potentially punishable by a custodial sentence of 14 years for both the mother and her doctor if an identified risk is deemed not substantial enough.  “I believe that the definition of substantial risk to life can provide problems for doctors who are worried that if they make a wrong clinical decision, a custodial sentence of 14 years is hanging over both them and their patient.”

But when challenged by Senator Ronan Mullen, she admitted there has been no case law of doctors being prosecuted in Ireland and “one or two cases where doctors have been accused of inappropriate termi­nation of pregnancy” in Northern Ireland, were not on their assessment of risk but on a completely different ground.

Deputy Mattie McGrath noted that at the Oireachtas committee hearings in 2013, “Dr. Mahony and other obstetricians agreed that they did not know of any instance where a needless mater­nal death had occurred because doctors had felt unable to act to save a woman’s life under the Eighth amendment.”

Deputy Mattie McGrath also asked Dr. Mahony for what specific health conditions she would recommend should be a ground for abortion. She answered: “It would be impossible and would not be wise to provide a compre­hensive list of either conditions that can kill someone or cause adverse health outcomes. … What doctors and their patients require is the flexibility to work together in the context of clinical disease in pregnancy to make good sound decisions that will ensure that women are safe.”

Professor Binchy defends equal worth of every human being before Oireachtas Committee on abortion

Professor William Binchy appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on abortion yesterday.  Professor Binchy, an expert in constitutional law, is one of the main architects of the pro-life clause of our Constitution. In his testimony to the committee, he defended the right to life of the unborn and challenged the idea that under our international law commitments, we must liberalise our abortion regime.

Human rights, he explained, are based on the inherent and equal worth of every human being. “Human beings have human rights, not because they are given by legislators or courts, but by reason of their humanity.” Commenting on the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly, he claimed that, if accepted, they would make lawful to take the life of a child on request, with no restriction as to reasons, and also where the child has a significant foetal anomaly. “If human rights are to have any meaning, one human being should not be entitled to choose to end the life of another, innocent and defenceless, human being. The idea that our law should authorise the taking of a child’s life with “no restriction as to reasons” is, frankly, abhorrent to any civilised society.”

Speaking of children with disabilities, professor Binchy remarked that “terminating the life of a disabled child because of the child’s disability is not consistent with respect for the child’s equal right to life.” Our society has been founded on the value that no one has the right to choose to hurt, let alone kill, another innocent human being – professor Binchy claimed -but the “right to choose” philosophy, fully embraced by the Citizens’ Assembly implies, the right to take the life of another human being, with “no restriction as to reasons”, on the basis of the supremacy of choice.

The international human rights treaties which Ireland has ratified do not provide for a right to abortion, according to the Trinity academic. If they were in conflict with the Irish Constitution they would not have been ratified. Any comment from the monitoring committees of the international treaties does not change the meaning of the treaties. Their members, Professor Binchy maintained, are earnest supporters of the “right to choose” philosophy and Ireland doesn’t have to change its Constitution to get it in line with their views.

Commenting on the submission of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, of which he was a member for two terms, he noted that if the proposals were implemented, they would involve abortion with little or no restrictions in practice, i.e. a regime of abortion on demand. “Throughout its Policy Document, the Commission never addresses the entitlement of children before birth to be protected from having their lives ended. It offers no reasons why such a profound discrimination against them should be proposed. Alarmingly, it presents no objections from a human rights perspective to late term abortions.”