Senior Legal Expert on Medical Law Calls Department of Health NI Guidelines on Abortion “Seriously Misleading”.
Professor John Keown, a Barrister and former Senior Lecturer in law at Cambridge University, and Senior Research Fellow at Churchill College, now a Professor in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington was asked by the Association of Catholic Lawyers of Ireland to comment on the Consultation Document on Abortion Guidelines issued by the Department of Health NI.
Mrs Johanna Higgins, Barrister, of the ACLI says, “Professor Keown is a leading expert in the field of abortion law, having written such important books as “ Abortion, Doctors and the Law“ really the only book of its kind, an analysis of the history of abortion law. He also has a distinguished legal career, having lectured in Law and ethics at Cambridge and achieving his Doctorate from Oxford. He now holds the Rose f Kennedy Chair in Christian Ethics.”
Professor Keown, whose research has been cited widely, in particular by the U.S. Supreme Court (in its decision on physician-assisted suicide), by the English Court of Appeal (in the conjoined twins case, 2000); and by the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics, has stated, regarding the Department of Health’s document on abortion;
“The opening statement of the Guidance on the Termination of Pregnancy ….is seriously misleading.”
He further states;
“The starting point of the Guidance should be a clear statement of the illegality of abortion in Northern Ireland: that it is a crime punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment to use any means with intent to procure miscarriage. The Guidance should then recall the central if not sole purpose of this prohibition: the protection of the unborn child, a purpose which has informed the law against abortion for over 700 years.”
Mrs Higgins says;“ I am extremely grateful to Dr Keown for his help in underlining a fundamental flaw in these guidelines. His assistance has been greatly appreciated by the ACLI and I am thankful for his help with the law in this important matter.”
Mrs Higgins goes on to say; “I have stated clearly, in my Briefing Papers on this matter, that the Department of Health has issued flawed guidance which is unreliable as a clarification of the law.”
Dr Keown further states;
“just because there may be a defence to abortion in exceptional circumstances does not mean that the government is under a duty to provide access to abortion in those circumstances, any more than it is under a duty to provide citizens ready access to weapons for use in self-defence.”
FULL STATEMENT BY DR KEOWN.
Statement on the Department of Health NI Guidance on Termination of Pregnancy from Professor John Keown.
The opening paragraph of the Guidance states, in bold:
Within the scope of this Guidance and the law in Northern Ireland, each Health & Social Services Trust must ensure that its patients have access to termination of pregnancy services
This is seriously misleading, not least as it invites the exception to swallow the rule.
The starting point of the Guidance should have been a clear statement of the illegality of abortion in Northern Ireland: that it is a crime punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment to use any means with intent to procure miscarriage, and an offence to supply means knowing that they are to be used with that intent. The Guidance should then have recalled the central if not sole purpose of this prohibition: the protection of the unborn child, a purpose which has informed the law against abortion for over 700 years. Only when the rule had been clearly stated should the scope of the exception have been considered. Similarly, the Guidance should accurately have stated the law against child destruction and its central purpose, the protection of a child “capable of being born alive”, and then have noted the narrowness of the exception to this prohibition: such a child may be intentionally destroyed for the purpose only of saving the life of the mother. (It is remarkable that paragraph 2.6 of the Guidance, which purports to quote the statute, misstates this exception by omitting the important word “only”.)
Would one begin Guidance on the law of theft, which recognises that in exceptional circumstances A may lawfully appropriate B’s property, by saying that “within the scope of law of theft, the government should ensure that everyone has access to everyone else’s property”? Further, just because there may be a defence to abortion in exceptional circumstances does not mean that anyone (doctor or government) is under a duty to provide abortion in those circumstances, any more than anyone is under a duty to provide citizens with weapons for use in self-defence. Moreover, the government has a discretion as to how to allocate its healthcare resources: it is perfectly entitled to prioritise medical procedures which do not involve the destruction of life.
Professor John Keown MA DPhil PhD
Kennedy Institute of Ethics
Georgetown University
About Professor John Keown
John Keown is the Rose F Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics at Georgetown University, Washington DC. He graduated in law from Cambridge in 1984 and obtained a DPhil from Oxford in 1986 for a thesis on the historical development of the law on abortion. After being called to the Bar of England and Wales (Middle Temple) in 1986 he was appointed to a lectureship in medical law at the University of Leicester. In 1993 he was appointed to a lectureship in the law and ethics of medicine at Cambridge, where he was a Fellow of Queens’ College and Churchill College. In 2003 he assumed the Rose F Kennedy Chair at Georgetown.
His many publications include three books, all published by Cambridge University Press: Abortion, Doctors and the Law (1988); Euthanasia Examined: Ethical, Clinical and Legal Perspectives (1995) and Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy: An Argument Against Legalisation (2002).
