Irish Government Bans Suicidal Rape Victim From Getting Abortion

Wow….

Irish Government Forces Suicide Rape Victim To Give Birth

The battle over abortion rights is just as heated in Ireland as it is in the United States and one Irish woman in particular will now be a mother to a child conceived during her rape against her wishes.

via Think Progress

A young rape victim in Ireland who said she was suicidal — and who was examined by two psychologists to confirm her symptoms of depression — has been denied the right to end her pregnancy under the socially conservative country’s strict abortion ban. Her baby was recently delivered by C-section at 25 weeks.

The case is reigniting controversy over Ireland’s harsh reproductive health laws, which sparked international protests in 2012 after a woman died because she was denied access to an emergency abortion. If Savita Halappanavar had been allowed to end her pregnancy, she might still be alive today. The widespread outrage over her preventable death spurred Irish lawmakers to slightly relax the country’s total abortion ban last year.

According to the BBC, the young women who recently gave birth — who is not being identified by name in the press — is “believed to be young and very vulnerable” and became pregnant after a sexual assault. The Irish edition of The Sunday Times reports that the woman first discovered she was pregnant at about eight weeks and, as the victim of a “traumatic rape,” immediately began the process for obtaining a mental health exemption to Ireland’s abortion law. Since she is not a citizen of Ireland, she couldn’t travel to another European country to end the pregnancy.

After the woman was examined by two psychologists and one obstetrician, both psychologists agreed she was having suicidal thoughts that put her life at risk. But the obstetrician determined her fetus was viable and should be delivered. Since the final decision about the case wasn’t handed down until 17 weeks had passed — by which point the woman was 25 weeks into her pregnancy — she believes the government was deliberately delaying the process to ensure her fetus would reach viability.

After her request for an abortion was denied, she went on a hunger strike.

Sounds like this issue is an uphill battle that won’t soon be over.

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