The Eighth Amendment was added to the Constitution by referendum in 1983, after concerns that laws prohibiting abortion could be found to be unconstitutional based on a right to privacy.
In 1992, the Supreme Court held in the X Case that a thirteen-year-old girl who had become pregnant as a result of rape could be permitted to obtain an abortion in the state because there was a risk to her life from suicide.
The constitutional and legislative provisions were discussed at a Citizens' Assembly in 2016–17, and at an Oireachtas committee in 2017, both of which recommended substantial reform and framed the debate of the referendum in May 2018.
These provisions enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom remained in force in Irish law until they were repealed by the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013.
[30] The Bell magazine in 1941 said that some young women from well-off backgrounds were "hustled off, normally to London, Paris, Biarritz, comes back without the baby and nobody is any the wiser"[31] After the war the level of prosecutions decreased, though this only relates to abortions that went wrong or were found out.
[32][33][34] The Garda Commissioner's first annual report on crime published in 1947 made reference to the number of abortions that were performed illegally.
The Abortion Act 1967 in Great Britain made access to the treatment easier for Irish women and the instance of infanticide, which was prevalent, began to decline sharply.
[citation needed] In 1974 Noël Browne became the first member of the Oireachtas to propose the provision of therapeutic abortion services during a contribution to a Seanad debate.
[38] In 1981 future President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, chaired a meeting at Liberty Hall that advocated a woman's right to choose.
[40] A number of controversies have arisen following deaths of pregnant women who were prevented from receiving medical care because of their pregnancy, such as Sheila Hodgers in 1983.
The government set an indicative timescale of early summer 2018 for a referendum on the section of the state's constitution that ensures tight legal restrictions on terminations.
In the 1980s the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children challenged distribution of information relating to abortion services in Britain under the provisions of Article 40.3.3°.
In 1992, in the X Case, the Attorney General sought an injunction to prevent a thirteen-year-old girl who had been the victim of rape from obtaining an abortion in England, which was granted in the High Court by Justice Declan Costello.
In November 1992, the Twelfth Amendment of the Constitution Bill was proposed, which would have removed a risk of self-destruction as grounds for an abortion, but was defeated in a referendum.
She was suicidal due to the pregnancy, and the High Court ruled in the C Case that the Eastern Health Board could arrange for her to travel to Britain for an abortion against the wishes of her parents.
The court ruled that the first two women's rights were not violated by being forced to travel because Irish law was "legitimately trying to protect public morals".
[47] The ECtHR also ruled that Irish law struck a fair balance between the women's rights to respect of their private lives and the rights of the unborn, although it found that Ireland had violated the ECHR by failing to provide an accessible and effective procedure by which a woman can have established whether she qualifies for a legal abortion under current Irish law.
This pertained to the case of the woman who identified as C. Since she did not receive accurate information about the risks of pregnancy associated with her prognosis, she believed that she did not qualify for legal abortion in Ireland and was forced to travel to England for the procedure.
[48] In this case, the court relied on doctrine that would deny the direct challenge to Ireland's criminal law and this led to the reasoning that abortion is a moral issue.
With the complex, lengthy and sensitive debate surrounding the issue, the Court made its ruling that state authorities were better suited than an international judge to balance the competing views and rights in abortion regulation.
[49] A government-appointed Expert Group on Abortion released its findings on 13 November 2012, the day before news of the death of Savita Halappanavar broke, saying that Ireland was obliged to implement the court's decision and recommending legislative and statutory reform.
The death of Savita Halappanavar led to protests in 2012 calling for changes to Ireland's abortion laws and a highly public investigation by the Health Service Executive.
The HSE enquiry found that her death was a result of inadequate assessment and monitoring and a failure to adhere to established clinical guidelines, and made several recommendations, including legislative and constitutional change.
[57] The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 was proposed by Minister for Health James Reilly on behalf of the Fine Gael–Labour Party government.
[58] Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Sinn Féin had a party whip in favour of the legislation, and among those who opposed it were Fine Gael TDs Lucinda Creighton, Terence Flanagan, Peter Mathews, Billy Timmins, and Brian Walsh, and Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín.
[63] In May 2007 a 17-year-old girl, known as "Miss D", who was pregnant with a foetus suffering from anencephaly (the absence of a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp; blind, deaf, unconscious, and unable to feel pain, a disorder which is invariably fatal), was prevented from travelling to Britain by the Health Service Executive.
By using social media to bring stories into the public, emotions were mobilised as a form of 'political resistance' to shed light on the potential damage a 'No' vote could cause.
[77] The Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 defines the circumstances and processes within which abortion is legally performed in Ireland.
In March 2019, a woman in Dublin was told her baby was likely to have Edwards syndrome, considered a fatal foetal condition, following a positive non-invasive prenatal test (NIPT) and a positive chorionic villus sampling (CVS) diagnostic test, the mother opted for an amniocentesis, which did not show Edwards syndrome.
Following the abortion, genetic tests proved negative for Edwards syndrome, leaving the parents devastated and demanding an external investigation, which the hospital agreed to.