Greg DalyThe Northern bishops have described themselves as “shocked and disturbed” by a Belfast High Court ruling that the region’s almost total ban on abortion breaches the European Convention on Human Rights.
The decision was made in response to a legal challenge from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.
Mr Justice Mark Horner held that the convention’s eighth article, relating to the right to privacy, was breached because obliging women to persist in pregnancies that arise through sexual assaults constituted a serious interference with their personal autonomy, as did barring women carrying children with fatal foetal abnormalities from abortions.
“When the foetus leaves the womb, it cannot survive independently. It is doomed,” he said, adding, “There is nothing to weigh in the balance. There is no human life to protect.”
However, in a statement, the bishops whose dioceses have parishes in the North, said they were shocked by the judge’s claim that such children are “doomed”, having “no human life to protect”.
Respect
“By any human and moral standard these children are persons,” the bishops continued, “and our duty to respect and protect their right to life does not change because of any Court judgement.”
Their pastoral experience had taught them that “even in the hardest of hard cases society cannot forget that human life is sacred and always deserving of our utmost protection, compassion and care”, they said, lamenting as “profoundly disquieting” how the court had “effectively weighed up one life against another and said to our society that the life of some children is more worthy of our protection, love and care than others”.
Bernadette Smyth, the director of Precious Life, described the ruling as “morally wrong” and said she was “deeply saddened” by the judge’s failure to recognise the right to life that all unborn children share.
Attorney General John Larkin QC has said he is “profoundly disappointed” by the ruling and is considering appealing the decision.