Linda Greenhouse Sees Possible Parallel to U.S. in European Court of Human Rights' Decision on Ireland's Abortion Law

New York Times Opinionator: Abortion Takes Flight, by Linda Greenhouse:

Irish law prohibits all abortions except those necessary to save a woman’s life, and as a practical matter it imposes daunting obstacles to terminating life-threatening pregnancies as well. In a secularized Europe, Ireland is noticeably out of step. Of the 47 countries covered by the European Convention on Human Rights, only in the fairytale countries of Andorra, Malta and San Marino, where all abortions are illegal, is the law any stricter.

So a decision earlier this month from the European Court of Human Rights in the Case of A, B, and C v. Ireland, promised to be of more than routine interest. A challenge to the Irish law brought by three women asserting rights under the European Convention, it held the potential to express a Continent-wide consensus that abortion rights are human rights. . . .

But a closer reading of the 40,000-word decision tells a different story. . . .

Ordinarily I would not devote a column to the decision of a non-U.S. court, in the jurisprudence of which I claim no particular expertise. But as I finished reading this opinion, I had the eerie feeling that I was peering into a domestic future. . . .