History: 2002

Projects in 2002

Some of the projects undertaken for the year 2002

The Unborn in Court

The question of the "personhood" of the unborn child was brought before the courts in January 2002, when a Nigerian woman challenged a deportation order from the Minister of Justice on the basis that she was pregnant.

The baby became known as Baby O, and the case became a bit of a quandary. “Give the woman a chance,” was the catch cry of the media, but that also meant by extension, giving all babies a chance. Not a problem for most people, but it would mean that the court would have to make a definitive ruling on unborn children’s rights.

Baby O got a hearing in court and argued in the absence of a deportation order s/he could not be deported. Faced with this legal person the state initially denied all existence of the person. “Haebus corpus” they chimed and looked rather silly when corpus just snoozed through the proceedings but was definitely proved to be present.

They faced up to facts eventually and the principle was established that the baby did exist and had rights.

A divisive referendum

2002 was another busy year on the nationally consultative front with the people being asked to decide on the constitution on two separate occasions: once on Europe and once on Abortion.

March 6 was the date set for an abortion referendum – which was being spun as a pro-life referendum as a Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. But the amendment offered was seriously flawed, being deliberately designed to exclude the human embryo outside the womb and offering dubious definitions as to the nature of abortion. The referendum had been won by the huge lobbying effort in 2000 and by the work put in by the pro-life movement in defeating the Nice Treaty, but that opportunity was to be subverted by Ahern’s government who wanted to push through this fatally flawed amendment by threatening pro-life people of worse to come if they rejected the compromised wording.

Whatever legalese the government tried to spin to make it seem otherwise, it was pretty obvious that the intention was to leave the way open for embryo research (afterward shown to be the case). The wording also contained unnecessary ambiguities in regard to medical treatment. After much discussion, YD agreed to oppose the referendum.

Suggested changes to the proposal which would have improved it was rejected by the government.

Some pro-life groups decided to take what was being offered as they believed the threat of an unacceptable alternative behind the offer. – the lesser of two evils so to speak. The pro-aborts opposed the wording as it didn’t go half far enough since they favour abortion of the free and on-demand sort.

In the end, the referendum was defeated. The government acknowledged that a substantial portion of the No vote was pro-life, and admitted there was no mandate for abortion legislation.

Day of Prayer for Unity

After all the divisiveness caused by the abortion referendum and the divisiveness caused by taking different sides, pro-life groups including M&CC decided to get together and work for unity. On Saturday, June 22nd a Day of Prayer for Pro-Life Unity was held in Knock where Holy Mass and prayers were offered so that the pro-life movement could be unified in purpose and in prayer for the protection of life itself.

Ireland votes to fund embryo research

Monday, 3rd June marked the final adoption by the European Council of Ministers (CoM) of the Research Programme which would allow taxpayers’ monies to be used to fund activities in another member state which are illegal in their own country. This meant that money spent by the EU on embryo research would be funded by Irish taxes.

On the 30th of September 2002, the Council followed up by approving the programmes of the 6th Framework Programme for Research 2002-2006 and assigned a budget of €17.5m to it.

Voting with the dark side was Ireland’s Minister Micheál Martin. Despite a storm of lobbying, he voted to fund experimentation of human life, relying on the sorry fact that the electorate is mostly unaware of what happens in Brussels.

The CoM is the second step in EU legislative process. The EU Commission suggests legislation, the CoM then ratifies it, without making changes, and they then pass it to the European Parliament who can toss it about and then make suggestions about it which the CoM can then choose to ignore.

The EP debated the issue the following spring (see 2003).