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Abortion on suicide grounds: the experience of California

At the recent Oireachtas Committee hearings on abortion it was argued that legalising abortion on suicide grounds might lead to more widespread abortion.

It would be helpful then to look at the experience of California which permitted abortion for what were considered very narrow mental health exceptions before Roe v Wade.

In California's Therapeutic Abortion Act of 1967 abortion was only permitted if the threat to the mental health of the mother was acute.

The woman needed a committee of two licensed doctors (or 3 if after the 13th week of pregnancy) to be in unanimous agreement to allow an abortion.

Prior to approving an application for an abortion the committee must have certified that there was "a substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother".

The term "mental health," was defined as "mental illness to the extent that the woman is dangerous to herself or to the person or property of others or is in need of supervision or restraint."

These were the same grounds as for committal to a mental health institution, leading legislators to believe that it was a very rigorous standard.

So, what happened?

In 1970, just one year, there were 63,872 abortions approved and 61,572 performed.

Virtually all of them, 98.2%, were approved and performed under the mental health exception. (The Act also allowed for abortion where the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.)

The California Supreme Court, reflecting on the flood of abortions coming from the mental heath exception said in 1972 that: " Serious doubt must exist that such a considerable number of pregnant women could have been committed to a mental institution. Either pregnancy carries risks to mental health beyond those ever imagined, or legal writers and members of the therapeutic abortion committees, two groups we must assume to be of at least common intelligence, have been forced to guess at the meaning of this provision and have reached radically different interpretations."

So, are California doctors more prone to collusion than Irish doctors? Are they less trust worthy? That is not the issue.

The issue is that the experience of other jurisdictions shows that even rigorous standards have been widely abused. And according to the expert evidence given at the recent Oireachtas Committee hearings, abortion is never a treatment for suicidality.

These key issues must be borne in mind as the government moves on this issue in the coming weeks.

Paul Linton, U.S. Constitutional Scholar and author on abortion law in America discusses the debate on abortion in Ireland.

Video_PaulLinton

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