Legislation along the lines of the X case which allows abortion in the case of suicide would not vindicate the 
equal right to life of the unborn child and would be unconstitutional, former Taoiseach John Bruton has said.
In an article [1] in today’s Irish Times, Mr Bruton says that article 40.3.3 “acknowledges an equal right to life of a mother and of her unborn child”.
The article comes as the Government, led by Fine Gael, the party formerly led by Mr Bruton, is planning to legislate for abortion along the lines of the X case.
The planned legislation would permit abortion when there is a threat of suicide by a pregnant woman.
However, Mr Bruton said that such legislation would not be in accord with the plain meaning of Article 40.3.3 which protects the unborn child.
He said: “Would a law including a provision allowing a suicide threat to be a basis for ending the life of an unborn child be consistent with the plain words of the Constitution, which require the State to ‘defend and vindicate’ the unborn child’s ‘equal’ right to be allowed to live? I believe the answer to the question is no.
“The Irish Constitution belongs to the people. It uses language, ie words, to convey certain understandings of what the Irish people guarantee one another. Because the words in the Constitution may be changed only by the people, it follows that the words in the Constitution should be interpreted as the same words would be understood in daily usage.”
Mr Bruton said that the actual words in the Constitution acknowledge “an equal (my emphasis) right to life of a mother and of her unborn child”.
He said: “The sentence would have made have sense even if the word ‘equal’ was not there. It would also have made sense if the sentence had said that ‘due regard’ was to be had to a ‘superior right to life’ of the mother. But that is not the wording of the Constitution.”
“The word ‘equal’ is there, referring to the right to life of both mother and unborn child, and it was put there with the explicit approval of the people. It would be hypocritical to pretend that the Constitution is not framed as it is, and hypocrisy is not a solid basis for constitutional interpretation.
“How ought the words “equal right to life” be interpreted? Many words we use in daily language have ambiguous or various meanings, but the word “equal” has only one meaning. Equal means equal, whether the word “equal” is used by lawyers or by mathematicians.”
The difficulty with legislation which would say that a threat or an idea of suicide is a ground for ending the life of an unborn child was that a risk of suicide was not equal to “a certainty of the ending of another person’s life by the actions of that person or of another,” Mr Bruton said.
He said: “A law that took away a right to life of that unborn child before the right in question could be exercised independently could hardly be interpreted as ‘defending and vindicating’ the same right, as the Constitution requires.”