Conscientious Objection in Termination of Pregnancy Services in Ireland: Interdisciplinary Insights

A seminar as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series by Andrea Mulligan, Assistant Professor of Law at the School of Law in Trinity, teaching and researching in the field of Medical Law and Bioethics.

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Abstract
In 2018 the Irish people voted to amend the Constitution to permit the legislature to legalise termination of pregnancy (ToP), thereby overturning 35 years of constitutional protection for the foetus. Legislation governing ToP provides for a statutory right of conscientious objection. Historically, conscientious objection has generated little ethical or legal controversy in Ireland because of the unavailability of ToP,and because there has been wide accommodation of conscience in the sphere of contraception. This paper will present aspects of the research from the CORALE Study (Conscientious Objection after Repeal: Law Abortion, and Ethics). Funded by the Irish Research Council, this is an interdisciplinary project that unites scholars from the disciplines of Law, Midwifery and Ethics to investigate the operation of the right to conscientious objection in ToP. CORALE employs a three-phase mixed methods sequential explanatory design encompassing both doctrinal/theoretical legal and ethical research methods and social science empirical methodology. An overarching theme in the project is the tension between accommodating the right to conscience while ensuring service provision, and the tension between conflicting rights that conscientious objection attempts to mediate.
This paper will focus on the theoretical legal research, and speak to its intersection with the ethical and empirical aspects of the project. present aspects of both the doctrinal and empirical findings from the project. Key issues include the extent of the duty to refer, the definition of participation and the interaction with rights to protection of conscience under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Constitution of Ireland.

Biography
Andrea Mulligans particular area of specialisation is the legal regulation of human reproduction, encompassing maternity care, assisted reproduction and abortion. Andrea is PI on the IRC-funded CORALE Project investigating attitudes to conscientious objection in abortion services in Ireland. Andrea served as a member of the Pandemic Ethics Advisory Group, a sub-group of NPHET (the National Public Health Emergency Team) during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Andrea was appointed a Commissioner at the Law Reform Commission of Ireland in 2020 and is the only academic member of the Commission. Alongside her academic work, Andrea is a practising Barrister in the field of medical law.

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