Michael Noonan TD Unborn children may still be protected by the Constitution even if the Eighth Amendment is repealed, former Fine Gael leader and minister for finance Michael Noonan has said.
Speaking in a Fine Gael parliamentary meeting, Mr Noonan urged the Oireachtas Committee on the Eight Amendment to take legal advice on what the implications would be on the removal of article 40.3.3. of Bunreacht na hÉireann, which guarantees the equal right to life of a mother and her unborn child.
He said that even without this, unborn children may still be an ‘inferred’ constitutional right to life, and that any proposed referendum wording might need to limit this right explicitly.
Mr Noonan was minister for justice when the Eighth Amendment was introduced –backed by almost 67% of voters – in 1983. The then Attorney General, Peter Sutherland, had advised the Government that the amendment was unnecessary. In 1980 the Supreme Court case of G v An Bord Uachtala established that unborn children had a right to life.
More recent judgments, in light of the Children’s Rights referendum have compounded this. In 2014 the Court ruled that a mother’s life support system could be switched off “in the best interests of the unborn child”, and in August 2016 the High Court’s Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the must protect “all” children, including children “both before and after birth”, with unborn children having “significant” rights, “going well beyond the right to life alone”.