Irish Women Fight for Reproductive Rights as Human Rights

Stupak, Stupak, Stupak ... if you're concerned about women's reproductive rights in the United States, you've probably got Stupak on the brain. But leave that scarecrow behind for a moment, click your ruby slippers, and head across the ocean to the Emerald Isle, and it quickly becomes clear that we're not even in Kansas anymore.

In stark contrast to most of their neighbors, the state of abortion rights in Ireland is ... well, it's a lot of Wicked Witch and not much Glinda. Anti-choicers run the show, leaving a Munchkin-sized exception to the ban in cases of danger to the woman's life, while getting an illegal abortion will win you a lifetime behind bars. Under an uneasy and vaguely hypocritical 1992 compromise, the Irish Supreme Court allowed women to make their way down the yellow brick road to any of the more progressive European countries to get an abortion. Not that I want travel for choice limited, but, really, Ireland thinks abortion is a crime so heinous it should be punishable by life in prison -- unless you don't do in on their soil, in which case it's perfectly okay? Sounds to me like the government's a bit of a Cowardly Lion, not brave enough to fully defend women's rights against anti-choice agitators.

Three fighting Irish women are now challenging their country's draconian stance on abortion before the European Court of Human Rights. Their goal: a ruling that the infringements on their abortion rights violate the Convention on Human Rights, which would then lead to reproductive rights being equated with universal rights under four provisions of that document. That's a bucket of cold water that would allow these Dorothies to melt away much of the anti-choice movement's power over Ireland.

The headline for an American Prospect article refers to this case as possibly "Europe's Roe v. Wade?" In reality, this is way bigger. Here in the States, our 1972 decision based off the right to privacy seems in constant jeopardy from anti-choice forces. If the hoped for decision is reached in this situation, the artificial curtain that has divorced reproductive rights from basic human rights will be torn away, revealing the Wizard of Anti-Abortion as a humbug.

Reproductive rights are human rights. It's time we stopped being distracted by the flying monkeys and made that clear.

Photo courtesy of AICAD's Flickr photostream.