Ireland’s Abortion Law: Act of Public Hypocrisy : Church: With an alleged rape victim, 14, wanting to end her pregnancy, this Catholic country must deal with its attitudes about abortion.

A 14-year-old alleged rape victim has forced Ireland into a wrenching public debate about the church’s influence over social policy in this 95% Catholic country. Although the Irish Supreme Court has allowed the girl to leave the country to obtain an abortion, the case still poses a serious threat to the survival of the new Irish government and to Irish ratification of the proposed European unification treaty. In addition, the case resonates in the United States, where it has intensified fears over how the lives of women would be affected if Roe vs. Wade is overturned and states could impose restrictions on abortion.

Before this case, Ireland comfortably maintained its constitutional ban on abortion--even as an estimated 4,000 women annually visited abortion clinics on the other side of the Irish Sea. Until relatively recently in Ireland’s history, to be Irish meant to be Catholic and to suffer the concerted oppression of an alien government. As a result, both identities merged, and religious belief became a part of Ireland’s national heritage. Though abortion had been outlawed since the 1860s, when a strict anti-abortion amendment to the constitution was proposed in 1983, it passed by a 2-1 margin.

Then the family of a girl allegedly raped by her friend’s father asked the police if fetal tissue from the abortion would be needed as evidence by the prosecution. The Irish attorney general responded by taking the girl to court to stop her from leaving the country, citing the 1983 amendment. A judge sided with the attorney general, ruling that, although the girl had apparently become suicidal, this risk was “much less and of a different order of magnitude than the certainty that the life of the unborn will be terminated if the order is not made.”

After the judge’s decision, polls showed two-thirds of the country favored changing the constitutional ban on abortion. The Catholic Church--in a remarkable last-ditch effort to protect the amendment--stated that, on advice of counsel, it now believed permitting the girl to travel was not inconsistent with the constitution. On Wednesday, under enormous pressure from the government, the Irish Supreme Court overruled the lower court and lifted the injunction.

This is not the first time that Ireland’s efforts to avoid awkward issues of public morality by imposing harsh restrictions even as it permits widespread evasion have produced turbulent consequences. Nor is it the first time that a solitary victim has sparked a reappraisal of Irish attitudes toward women’s issues.

The story of this young girl is sadly reminiscent of other women whose lamentable circumstances eventually resulted in the legalization of contraception. Mary McGee lived in a mobile home with her husband and four children. All the births had involved serious complications and her doctor had advised that another pregnancy could kill her. But the law at the time forbade the sale and importation of contraceptives. Mrs. McGee brought a court case when customs authorities refused to release contraceptive jelly, which they had confiscated in the mail.

In 1974, the Irish Supreme Court held that the Irish constitution protects the right to marital privacy within the family and McGee’s goods were released.

The McGee decision struck down the existing restrictions on contraception and finally forced Charles J. Haughey, the recently deposed prime minister but then the minister for health, to introduce new legislation. The Family Planning Act of 1979 required a doctor’s prescription for the sale of any contraception and a doctor’s certification that it was for “bona fide family-planning purposes.” At the time, Haughey described the law as an “Irish solution to an Irish problem.”

In 1985, the Family Planning Act was replaced by legislation authorizing the sale of condoms and spermicides without a prescription. But this came only after the Irish public was shocked by two more incidents starkly demonstrating the potential costs of limiting access to birth control and family-planning advice.

The year before, a 15-year-old convent schoolgirl crawled to a grotto on the grounds of a Catholic Church and, before a shrine of the Virgin Mary, gave birth to a baby boy. Both mother and child died. Neither the girl’s parents nor authorities at her school were aware she was pregnant. Several months later, a dead baby was found on an isolated beach. The baby had been stabbed 28 times. An ensuing inquiry revealed excruciating details of the mother’s affair with a married man.

Within an hour of the government’s proposing the 1985 contraceptive legislation, the archbishop of Dublin attacked the law as inciting premarital sex, moral decline, venereal disease, teen-age pregnancies, illegitimate births and abortion. But it passed--barely--and, for the first time since the foundation of the Irish State, the Catholic Church suffered a major defeat in a trial of strength with an elected government over public morality. An Irish Times editorial praised the law as “a coming to terms with reality which has been long overdue.”

In dealing with the crisis posed by the case of the 14-year-old, Ireland will not have the luxury of time. Although the Irish Supreme Court ruling has avoided an embarrassing referral to the European Court of Justice, its written decision will not be issued until this week. A narrow ruling is unlikely to quell the public furor over banning abortion in cases of rape or incest. The European Parliament has announced it will debate Irish abortion policy, declaring it raises important issues of principle for the European Community.

The controversy has also cast a shadow over Ireland’s referendum, scheduled for this summer, on the treaty on European unification. The Maastricht Treaty contains a protocol allowing Ireland to maintain its constitutional ban on abortion. There are widespread fears that Irish voters will not approve the treaty if it is viewed as reinforcing the “pro-life” clause of the constitution. European union is one of the few issues over which the Irish have compromised some of their historic identity in the name of increased political tolerance for values that do not reflect church dogma.

Unless the newly elected prime minister, Albert Reynolds, can craft an acceptable compromise to salvage the treaty quickly, his government is unlikely to survive. Reynolds initially ruled out a new national referendum on abortion--but he has already begun to speak about the importance of “a society which respects the rights of the living as well as the unborn.” Perhaps he will back a resolution not designed to simply buy time until the next tragic case forces Ireland to re-examine its attitude toward public morality.