Last week, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) announced its submission on the General Scheme of the Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services (Safe Access Zones)) Bill 2022, a government proposed law to limit assembly within 100 metres of abortion providers.
Within, it fully supports the government in its efforts to curtail assembly, and goes so far as to recommend the government increase the maximum custodial sentence proposed for offenders who seek to try to persuade, influence or harass those seeking abortion, within 100 metres of a service provider. The same was proposed in the UK by now-suspended Labour MP Rupa Huq who in September proposed an amendment for a two year jail sentence for offering support to women outside abortion clinics.
The proposal is all the more striking in Ireland where abortion was essentially illegal until 2013. A referendum in 2018 has meant that Ireland now has one of the most liberal abortion regimes in the world. Rather than life in the womb being considered a human right, the default position of rights and civil liberties groups is that access to abortion is absolute and the right to life for the unborn only contingent on whether it is wanted or not.
Human rights were originally established to protect citizens from the State and from majoritarian (mob) rule. They are often considered ‘side-constraints’ that shouldn’t be over-ridden for common good or majority preferences. Freedom of assembly is one of these and it is protected under the Irish Constitution as well as under various human rights instruments. However, abortion is now considered the ‘trump’ right in any discourse on the balancing of competing rights.
It is no longer a case that the balancing of rights is one between the rights of the mother and the rights of the child when it comes to abortion in Ireland – nor in most places in the western world. On that issue, Ireland is seemingly decided. In the IHREC submission to the Irish government, the balancing of rights to be considered is between ‘privacy and bodily autonomy’ and the right to ‘freedom of assembly and expression and religious freedom’. To this contest, it gives only lip-service.
Now the right to abortion is established in law, it is deemed a settled question of rights by the IHREC – which is an unusual position for a human rights body to take given that rights are supposed to be antecedent to the law, inalienable, not something that merely exist because they are conferred by government. In fighting for human rights, it is often the law that is sought and needed to change.
However, such is the IHREC’s support for the restrictions, the Commission notes “that the General Scheme seeks to balance the rights of service users and providers with the rights of those engaged in prohibited conduct”. The Commission does not examine or question whether the conduct ought to be prohibited in the first place, but rather concerns itself with the most appropriate means to deal with the offenders.
But the issue of concern right now is not whether abortion is right or wrong, or whether one agrees with it or not. It is not whether the right to peaceful assembly should be curtailed or restricted to certain areas. It is not even whether the curtailment of symbols (ie Rosary Beads) is an infringement of human rights, important though they are.
You can hold any view you wish on either of these and still be extremely concerned that a human rights body looks at a piece of proposed government legislation that provides for custodial sentences for those that peacefully assemble and recommends even harsher sentencing.
Instead of a maximum of twelve-months jail for offenders under the law, the Commission suggests that two years would be more appropriate. Organisations such as Amnesty International originated in defending the rights of prisoners of conscience, political prisoners, subject to the heavy hand of the State. Many of these were conscientious objectors, protestors, who wished to highlight the injustice of the law and of the State or to persuade others of their views.
The expectation ought to be that human rights and civil liberties groups would be defending the protesters (or their right to be protesters) but today the gamekeeper has turned poacher. It’s a truism to bring up the saying often attributed to Voltaire, ‘I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ in a time when the right to free speech and expression is increasingly curtailed when it aligns with the populist perspective.
Many of the commentators who now remain silent at the proposed jailing of abortion protestors were outraged at the removal of protestors from the vicinity of Buckingham Palace at the Queen’s funeral. Free speech, like human rights, has been subjected to ideological capture, inalienable only in its subjectivity.
Whether you are for or against abortion, for or against safe-access zones, surely it is time to be concerned about human rights groups seeking more punitive jail-time for peaceful assembly than even the State itself.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.