Reproductive health

Case no. [25579/05], ECHR (Grand Chamber), Strasbourg, 16 December 2010, A, B and C v. Ireland

Ground: The Article 8 of ECHR on the right to respect for the private and family life; positive actions; The Article 13 of ECHR on the right to an effective remedy; reproductive health.

The abstract of the Judgment

This case reflects aspects on the right to reject pregnancy according to the norms of criminal and civil law of Ireland and their change in time. The three applicants are residents in Ireland. The three of them had become pregnant unintentionally and had decided to commit a rejection of pregnancy. The first applicant was an unemployed and single mother. Her four children were in custody and she feared that another child would jeopardize her chances to regain the custody after continuous attempts to overcome problems with alcohol. The second applicant did not want to become a single parent. Even though she had taken medical advice that she risked an ectopic pregnancy, seems that this risk did not exist in this case. The third applicant was a cancer patient, and being so, because of the treatment she had received, she thought that foetus would be under the influence of her therapy. Because of restrictions in Ireland, the three applicants were obliged to seek an abortion in a private clinic in England. They considered this procedure expensive, complicated and traumatic.  The three applicants experienced difficulties in their return to Ireland, but feared to ask for medical advice because of restrictions on abortion. Although the Article 8 cannot be interpreted as an article on the right of abortion, the

impossibility of the first and second applicants to make an abortion in Ireland because of health/welfare reasons, as well as the supposed impossibility of the third applicant to perform a legal abortion in Ireland, came in the context of their right to respect for the private life. In the case of the third applicant, the Court found violation of the Article 8.