The case involved a fourteen-year-old girl (named only as "X" in the courts and the media to protect her identity) who was a ward of the state and who had been the victim of a statutory rape by a neighbour in December 1991 and became pregnant.

Attorney General Harry Whelehan sought an injunction under Article 40.3.3° of the Constitution of Ireland (which guaranteed "the right to life of the unborn") preventing her from having the procedure carried out.

The majority opinion (Chief Justice Thomas Finlay, Niall McCarthy, Séamus Egan and Hugh O'Flaherty) held that a woman had a right to an abortion under Article 40.3.3° if there was "a real and substantial risk" to her life.

Whelehan was later appointed as president of the High Court, but his office's stance on the X case, coupled with its lengthy delaying of the extradition from Northern Ireland of Brendan Smyth, on multiple charges of abuses against children, was met with severe and widespread criticism.

[5] There were regular calls, in subsequent decades, to "legislate for the X case", meaning to amend or replace the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 to permit and regulate abortion within the limited circumstances allowed by the 1992 judgment.

[6][7] The Scannal programme by RTÉ was broadcast on 22 February 2010, suggesting that the underlying divisions of opinion still exist, and that the facts of the case were too difficult and unique for a simple resolution at the time.