D v Ireland
D v Ireland is a case of the European Court of Human Rights concerning abortion in Ireland. It refers to the court case itself, and the circumstances surrounding abortion for fatal foetal abnormalities in Ireland. In 2002 Deirdre Conroy discovered her pregnancy was non-viable and had a termination in Northern Ireland. A public letter, written using a pseudonym, asking for it to be legal was credited with influencing the 2002 abortion referendum. She lost a court case in the ECHR in 2006 because she had not exhausted all domestic remedies. In 2013 after the death of Savita Halappanavar, she came forward, revealed her identity and again asked for this sort of termination to be legal.
Initial letter
In January 2002, Deirdre Conroy was 39, the mother of two boys aged 10 and 12, and expecting twins. At 14 weeks pregnant, the initial results of an amniocentesis test revealed one of the twins had died. Three weeks later, full test results revealed the second twin had Edwards syndrome, a condition which usually ends in miscarriage or death shortly after birth because of heart abnormalities, kidney malformations, and other internal organ disorders.In the run up to the Twenty-fifth Amendment Referendum, in February 2002, she wrote an open letter to The Irish Times newspaper, using the pseudonym Deirdre de Barra, telling of her case, and asking for termination for fatal foetal abnormalities to be legalised in Ireland. David Norris supported termination for FFA in that case. Terminations for fatal foetal abnormalities were not covered by the Twenty-fifth Amendment referendum, and would have remained illegal regardless of the outcome of that vote.
The letter was credited with playing a part in the defeat of the Twenty-fifth Amendment referendum.
She later travelled to Northern Ireland for a termination. The Irish hospital would not give her a referral letter, and her doctors were very guarded when discussing abortion with her.