Eoin Carolan on Ireland and Abortion

Eoin Carolan (University College Dublin – School of Law) has posted Reviewing Ireland's Abortion Regime on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The recent death of a woman from septicaemia following a miscarriage has focused attention on the legal regime regulating the carrying out of abortions within Ireland. The point of this piece is not to discuss the merits of the current controversy but instead to provide some brief background to Ireland’s constitutional position and to identify some of the aspects of the current regime that have given rise to particular difficulties: an exercise which may have wider significance, given the recent trend in various American states to follow the Irish approach of conferring constitutional protection on the unborn.

The piece considers whether the Irish experience suggests that the ‘resolution’ of a controversial issue at the constitutional level may discourage political action by providing sufficient legal authority, however imprecise, to make legislative inaction a viable, if inefficient, option.

The piece was originally posted on the I-Connect blog.