European Court Imposes Abortion on Catholic Ireland
Ireland may be regretting its slavish capitulation to all things European tonight after the European Court once again enthusiastically meddled matters that should only be decided by national parliaments:
Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion violates pregnant women’s right to receive proper medical care in life-threatening cases, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday, harshly criticizing Ireland’s long inaction on the issue.
The Strasbourg, France-based court ruled that a pregnant woman fighting cancer should have been allowed to get an abortion in Ireland in 2005 rather than being forced to go to England for the procedure. The judgment put Ireland under pressure to draft a law extending abortion rights to women whose pregnancies represent a potentially fatal threat to their own health.
Ireland has resisted doing that despite a 1992 judgment from the Irish Supreme Court that said Ireland should provide abortions in cases where a woman’s life is endangered — including, controversially, by her own threats to commit suicide.
Including suicide threats would make abortion effectively legal there, and that’s a long way from the position consistently adopted by the voters of Ireland since its creation. Rather like votes for prisoners, the ECHR is interfering in domestic matters never envisaged by its well-intentioned founders. It’s time to reassert national sovereignty on both sides of the Irish Sea and ignore these rulings until elected parliaments speak.
Good, we need more rulings like this, annoying people on deeply felt emotional issues as with their earlier ruling that Italian classrooms should not display the crusifix. How to lose friends and lose influence on people.
And more of this will help too. 😀
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/austria/8207015/Austrian-man-convicted-for-yodelling-while-Muslim-neighbours-prayed.html
Which was in some blogs weeks ago.
Yes, I know that the EU is not the same as the ECHR but they are all part of the same gang playing the same game.
Agree. I blogged here on the yodelling too and you’re right; these rulings – some stupid and others trampling over what voters think their own parliament is for will cause resentment to build up.
Although the EU and the ECHR are distinct organisations you can’t be a member of the first without belonging to the second too, so they are indeed two sides of the same coin.
It could be rather entertaining to see the EUSSR, via the ECHR go head-to-head with the Vatican ..
I know where I’d put my money ..
As banned says, more of this interference which is really pretty low level but goes against some deeply held beliefs is no bad thing. It’s almost worth writing to your MEP to demand that if England win the Ashes the team is immediately renamed the European Cricket Team and the open top bus parade is held in Brussels. It won’t change anything but it will piss an awful lot of people off who are – still – not quite angry enough yet.
Yes, remember Roberto Calvi, the Vatican banker who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge with bricks in his pockets?
There are some religious people you don’t cross (apologies for the pun).
Yes, remember Roberto Calvi, the Vatican banker who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge with bricks in his pockets?
There are some religious people you don’t cross (apologies for the pun).
The little things are the important ones because they are the ones that impact our day to day life.
When your village fete is banned, your pint glass; when you can’t read any more with the new lightbulbs that don’t work properly or can’t buy vegetables in the units you did a few years ago….that’s where the resentment builds uo – not necessarily with the big ticket items.