The people of the Republic of Ireland vote tomorrow to decide whether or not to repeal their draconian abortion laws. Currently in that country it's illegal to have an abortion for any reason at any time unless the life of the mother is in danger, reformers claim that even this caveat is very difficult to prove and trigger, and in some cases leads to the unnecessary death of women having difficulties with their pregnancy.
Most other western democracies have long since implemented more flexible laws around abortion. Using the best scientific evidence available, limits are typically put on aborting fetuses by age, 24 weeks in the case of the UK. A case of changing our laws to reflect experience, evidence and the well-being and pragmatic choices of human-beings in impossible situations. This way of creating and refining law seems to me to be far superior than more old-fashioned ideas that stem from institutions like the Catholic church, where what seems more important is dogma, compliance and a slavish subversion to authority, laws being made to be immutable unless they prove inconvenient to clergy or subverted by greasing the right palms.
Any country that has laws that are so easily subverted by people (who have the money) travelling to neighbouring countries for particular medical procedures needs to ask some important questions of itself. Questions like why so many people who can travel to get treatment do? and questions like who is actually running your country, the elected Government representing the will of the majority, or some unelected ancient religious sect that's accountable to no one and hell-bent on defending it's own parochial interests?
No system is perfect of course, every country has it's issues, just look at the fiasco that is Brexit, but when it comes to such sensitive and human issues I would certainly try to vote on the side of maximum compassion for all the people involved.
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