Vol. 550 No. 2
240 Mrs. Owen asked the Minister for Health and Children the full legal advice and other advice he has received in relation to the morning after pill and the IUD; and the criminal and civil legal positions regarding the use of both of these. [7459/02]
The strong and consistent legal advice available to the Government is that the constitutional position of the morning after pill and post-coital intra-uterine device is not open to doubt and that it is fully compatible with Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution. I understand that the Irish Medicines Board has received similar but independent legal advice. There is, therefore, no question of an infringement of the civil law. The acceptance or rejection of the proposal in the referendum on the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution will not change the constitutional law status of the morning after pill or IUD.
The criminal law on abortion in Ireland at present is contained in the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861. The morning after pill is currently the subject of legal challenge in the English High Court under the terms of that Act. Section 6 of the envisaged Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Act would repeal sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861. This new legislation, which would protect unborn human life after implantation in the womb, would replace those sections with a definition of abortion which would prevent any case being made that the morning after pill or IUD could be termed abortifacient or subject to criminal sanction.
In summary, there is currently no civil or constitutional law doubt about the morning after pill or IUD. That will not be altered by the acceptance of this referendum proposal. There may be criminal law doubt and the new law proposed would ensure that the use of the morning after pill or IUD would no longer come within the scope of the criminal law.
