Outrage Over Death of Woman Denied Abortion-For Free Abortion on Demand!-Ireland

Workers Vanguard No. 1013	23 November 2012

Outrage Over Death of Woman Denied Abortion-For Free Abortion on Demand!

Ireland

Across Ireland, thousands of people, representing a broad cross section of society, came out on November 17 to protest the cruel death of Savita Halappanavar. Seventeen weeks pregnant, she was admitted to University Hospital in Galway on October 21 with severe back pains and was told she was having a miscarriage. Despite her repeated requests for a medical termination, doctors refused to do the procedure on the grounds that the fetal heartbeat was still detectable. After days of agony, she died of septicemia, a victim of the anti-woman, clericalist policies of the Irish capitalist state.

The demonstrations are the largest rallies challenging Ireland’s draconian ban on abortion since the “X case” in 1992, when a court ruling barred a 14-year-old rape victim from leaving the country to obtain an abortion. The mass protests at that time forced the Supreme Court to lift the injunction in this one case, and the teenager was allowed to travel to England for an abortion. The court said that a woman could obtain an abortion if there was a “real and substantial risk” to her life, but in general women could still be legally barred from leaving the country to get the procedure. Abortion remains criminalized under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, buttressed by the anti-abortion Eighth Amendment to the constitution, and runs directly counter to the entrenched Catholic “ethos” of the hospitals, many of which are still controlled by the church.

We reprint below a November 16 Spartacist League/Britain leaflet distributed by International Communist League comrades at protests in Dublin and outside the Irish Embassy in London.

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The agonising death of Savita Halappanavar on 28 October, after being repeatedly denied an abortion, is the latest atrocity against women by the Irish clericalist state. It shows that, 20 years after Ireland was swept by mass protests over the “X case,” nothing fundamental has changed: a woman can not get an abortion to save her life. The barbaric treatment of the young Indian woman in hospital has caused widespread outrage and there is massive support for an end to Ireland’s virtual ban on abortion. Halappanavar’s mother bitterly condemned Ireland’s abortion laws, saying: “In an attempt to save a 4-month-old foetus they killed my 30-year-old daughter” (The Hindu, 15 November).

The question starkly posed today is how come, in the 21st century, a woman who was suffering a miscarriage was denied an abortion that could have prevented her death? Ireland is “a Catholic country,” the dying woman was told. Make no mistake: any effective fight for abortion rights necessarily means a hard-fought struggle against the full force of clerical reaction and against the capitalist state.

The mass protests in 1992 forced the Supreme Court to rule that the young woman known as “X” could go abroad for an abortion. At the time, the liberals and leftists who led the campaign lulled the mass movement into thinking that legislation for abortion rights would follow automatically. Such illusions in the Irish capitalist state were used to demobilise the struggle. We warned that:

“The women of Ireland and all those who favour abortion rights still face a bitter struggle for what is needed: free abortion and contraception on demand. It can rarely have been clearer that it will take working-class revolution to break the power of the church in society, and that the reformist parties of the Irish working class are utterly tied to the capitalist system of austerity, oppression and bigotry.”

— Workers Hammer No. 129, May/June 1992

The struggle for abortion rights, for the separation of church and state, as well as for decent healthcare and education provision, means a fight against the whole reactionary edifice of capitalism. It is in the direct interest of the working class—men and women—to take up the fight for free abortion on demand, as part of the struggle to free itself from capitalist austerity, exploitation and oppression. Irish society is no longer in thrall to the clergy, as it was for many decades. But the church maintains much control of education and healthcare—many hospitals abide by Catholic ethical codes. The right to an abortion should not be subject to the moral views of doctors or hospital management. For free abortion on demand! For free public healthcare for all! For separation of church and state!

Under capitalism, democratic rights are the product of social struggle and must constantly be defended against attack. In the 20 years since the “X case,” anti-abortion forces have relentlessly tried to reverse any opening for abortion rights that has been won, such as the right to information on abortion services and to travel abroad for an abortion. It is delusional to think that the capitalist parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, or for that matter Labour, a bourgeois workers party, will mount a fundamental challenge to reactionary Catholic forces over abortion rights. Yet these are the parties that reformists are capitulating to, restricting their demands to calling for legislation conforming to the Supreme Court ruling in the “X case.” This boils down to calling for abortion to be legalised only in cases where the woman’s life is in danger. The call for “free abortion,” which the Socialist Workers Party [Irish followers of the late Tony Cliff] tacked on to the end of a leaflet issued on 14 November, is merely a fig leaf covering their prostration before the Irish state.

Labour Tánaiste [Deputy Prime Minister] Eamon Gilmore has promised that the government will introduce guidelines stating when abortion is permitted. Of course Marxists defend any legal right to abortion, however limited, that might be achieved. Any legalisation of abortion would cause a rift within the government, with several Fine Gael TDs [members of parliament] insisting that no legislation be produced. A dividing line also runs through Sinn Féin, as [its president] Gerry Adams admitted, saying: “I realise there are strongly held opposing views, including within Sinn Féin and throughout society, on the issue of medical termination.” Adams concludes with the standard call for the government to provide legislation, no doubt assuming that such legislation will pander to the anti-abortion bigots, including those within his own party.

Clare Daly (formerly of the Socialist Party) and other TDs elected on the United Left Alliance ticket, put a motion in the Dáil [Irish parliament] earlier this year, solely designed “to provide for termination of pregnancy where a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother exists” (Irish Times, 22 February). In the Dáil debate following the death of Savita Halappanavar, seven “left” TDs—Patrick Nulty, Mick Wallace, Clare Daly, Joan Collins, Richard Boyd Barrett, Joe Higgins and Catherine Murphy—all pleaded with the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government to legislate “for abortion under the terms permitted by the Supreme Court ruling in the X case” (thejournal.ie, 15 November).

Labour Party senator Ivana Bacik likewise demands legislation, to “save the lives of pregnant women” (Irish Times, 16 November). Bacik cites the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2010 that Ireland must clarify the legal position on abortion. The government set up an “expert group” to produce recommendations on how to comply with the European Court ruling, but would prefer to postpone a decision as long as possible. Many today still look to the European Union to liberalise Ireland’s laws on abortion, and to permit gay marriage, etc. Such hopes are likely to be in vain. We oppose the European Union, an imperialist club that is dictating savage attacks on working people in Ireland, as well as in Greece, Spain and Portugal.

Limiting the demands for abortion rights to cases where the woman’s life is in danger is a betrayal of the basic needs of Irish women, thousands of whom are forced to travel to Britain every year for an abortion. To get an idea of what government legislation might look like, women in the South need only look across the border to Northern Ireland, where abortion is only available in cases where there is “a risk to the life of the woman or a risk of real and serious adverse effect to her physical and mental health on either a long-term or permanent basis.” Abortion in the North is regulated by criminal law, and is “punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment” (Irish Times, 12 October).

The newly opened Marie Stopes private clinic in Belfast, offering non-surgical abortions up to nine weeks, met with howls of protest from both Catholic and Protestant reactionaries. An article in the Irish Times (22 October) noted: “Last year only some 43 legal abortions were performed in the North while the Family Planning Association referred 40 women a week from there to British clinics for a private abortion. Like their Southern counterparts, the boat to Britain has been the only real option.” For the overwhelming majority of working-class and poor women, the “right” to have an abortion without the means to pay still leaves them without much “choice.” Women in Ireland, North and South, depend on the availability of abortion services in Britain, where abortion was legalised in 1967. However today the right to abortion in Britain has faced repeated threats, including an attempt to reduce the time limit of 24 weeks. Birth control and abortion remain restricted throughout the capitalist world by the state, by the institution of the family, and by organised religion, which all serve to enforce women’s oppression.

The fight for abortion rights must be linked to the struggle for women’s liberation through socialist revolution. As we noted in 1992, in opposition to liberals and reformists who trimmed their demands to what they thought was least likely to provoke reactionary forces: “This Gordian knot of bourgeois ‘constitutional’ legal wrangling can only be cut in a progressive sense by a tough, principled, iron-hard fight: not for this reform or that wording but for what is needed by women and the working class” (“For a Working Class-Centred Fight for Free Abortion on Demand!” Workers Hammer No. 129, May/June 1992). Socialist revolution will tear down the clericalist capitalist system in the South and that of the Loyalist masters in the North. The construction of a planned economy alone can provide quality healthcare and make abortion and contraception free and safe, on demand. Such a society would provide jobs for everyone, laying the material basis for the genuine liberation of women. We seek to build proletarian internationalist parties dedicated to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism on both sides of the Irish border and both sides of the Irish Sea.