Pro Life can’t join unborn child case

THE Supreme Court has ruled that the Pro Life Campaign cannot join a case involving the rights of the unborn child.

Judge Donal O’Donnell said that the group’s assistance to the court would be ‘minimal’, and that to allow it to join the case could open the floodgates to other organisations or individuals who wanted to support arguments on either side.

This could give rise to a significant risk of the case being delayed, in circumstances where the State wants its appeal heard before a referendum on abortion, he said.

The appeal, which the group wanted to join as an amicus curiae, or assistant to the court, concerned a High Court decision from 2016.

It had found that the Justice Minister was obliged to take into account the position of a child, even if unborn, when considering whether to revoke his or her parent’s deportation order.

Crucially, it also found that an unborn child has Constitutional rights extending beyond the right to life. This judgment is now being challenged by the State.

Cora Sherlock, of the Pro Life Campaign, had told the court on affidavit that the object of the campaign was to prevent the decriminalisation of abortion and to protect human life from the moment of conception.

Judge O’Donnell stated that these were immigration proceedings, in which concerns for the unborn played only one part.

He said the only expertise required was legal.