Mags GarganDear Editor, The recent denial by Irish doctors of a suicidal woman’s request for abortion has been greeted in some quarters by indignation, as if the decision by doctors to deliver the baby alive was an affront to her mother’s rights.
But I strongly suspect that it is the frustration of the woman’s request for abortion – rather than any genuine concern to treat her suicidal condition – that is driving this indignation.
It has rarely been noted in the abortion debate that a threat to commit suicide “if X happens”, no matter how psychologically or clinically plausible, almost never alters the subject’s legal rights and responsibilities. For example, persons may threaten suicide if compelled to pay their mortgage, if denied custody of their children, and so on, yet in no case is such a threat, however plausible or verified, accepted as grounds for altering their financial debts, their legal situation or the responsibility of the State to protect the persons around them from harm. If a credible threat of suicide is a fair basis for altering a woman’s legal obligations toward her unborn child, then it should be a fair basis for altering her legal obligations to pay her debts, respect private property or look after an infant under her care.
The fact that we are not willing to grant threats of suicide this standing in our law outside of the case of abortion is surely an indication that it is the right to abortion that is being sought above all, rather than the protection of women against the risk of suicide.
If we really wanted to protect women against the risk of suicide, we would provide them with the psychological support and treatment they require, rather than using their suicidality as a pretext for inflicting yet another trauma on them and on their offspring.
Yours etc.,
David Thunder,
Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society,
University of Navarra,
Pamplona,
Spain.