DUBLIN (AP) – United Nations human rights experts said Thursday that Ireland’s abortion ban subjects women to discriminatory, cruel and degrading treatment and should be ended for cases involving fatal fetal abnormalities.
The 29-page report from the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Committee accepted a complaint filed by Amanda Mellet, a Dublin woman who was denied a 2011 abortion in Ireland after her doctor informed her that her fetus had a fatal heart defect and could not survive outside the womb.
Ireland permits abortions only in cases where the woman’s own life is endangered by continued pregnancy. Its ban on abortion in all other circumstances requires women to carry a physiologically doomed fetus to full term in Ireland or travel abroad for abortions, usually to England, where thousands of Irish citizens have abortions annually.
The U.N. Human Rights Committee, constituting experts from 17 nations led by Fabian Salvioli of Argentina, found that Ireland’s abortion law violates the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on several points and called for widespread reform.
The panel wields no power to compel change from Ireland, a predominantly Roman Catholic nation that maintains the strictest laws on abortion in the 28-nation EU. Ireland’s government offered no immediate reaction to the findings.