DUBLIN—The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion violates the rights of pregnant women to receive proper medical care in life-threatening cases.
Thursday’s judgment will put Ireland under pressure to draft a law extending limited abortion rights to women whose pregancies represent a potentially fatal threat to their own health.
Ireland has resisted taking that step since 1992, when Ireland’s Supreme Court ruled this should happen.
The judgment ruled in favor of a Lithuanian woman living in Ireland who was successfully battling cancer and feared that her pregnancy would trigger a relapse of the disease. She had to travel to England for an abortion. The European judges ruled she should have received an abortion in Ireland.
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