A, B and C v Ireland
case of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to privacy under Article 8
A, B and C v Ireland is a landmark 2010 case of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to privacy under Article 8. The court rejected the argument that article 8 conferred a right to abortion, but found that Ireland had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to provide an accessible and effective procedure by which a woman can have established whether she qualifies for a legal abortion under current Irish law.
Facts
Three anonymous women, recorded in the case as "A, B and C" travelled to the United Kingdom to have abortions, because abortions were unlawful in Ireland.
A
A, thinking her partner was infertile, had become pregnant unintentionally. She was unmarried, unemployed, living in poverty, with an alcohol addiction and had four children, all in foster care and one disabled. At risk of post-natal depression and feeling a fifth child would risk her progress in becoming sober, she borrowed €650 from a money lender at a high-interest rate to pay for travel and a private clinic in the UK, arriving secretly in the UK without telling her family or social workers or missing a contact visit with her children. On the returning train from Dublin she began bleeding profusely, was taken to hospital for a dilation and curettage and suffered pain, nausea and bleeding for weeks thereafter but did not seek further medical advice. After the claim was made to the ECHR, she became pregnant again and gave birth to a fifth child, while struggling with depression. However, she regained custody of two of her children.
B
B became pregnant after her "morning-after pill" failed.
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