By Mary Nelis

The case of the 13 year old child from a Traveller family, made pregnant allegedly as a result of a brutal rape, has confronted the Irish government and people, once again, with a problem they clearly failed to resolve in the past.

The X case, Mark 2, has come back to haunt us all, in more ways than one, for not only has it raised the legal and constitutional grey areas of the 1992 Abortion Referendum, it has also focused attention on the social and economic plight of the travelling community.

Battle positions have already been drawn by the anti-abortion and pro-choice groups, for it now seems likely that the amendment voted in 1983 and 1992 has fallen at the first hurdle, and the interpretation by the Supreme Court is once again the subject of legal challenge.

Whilst the lawyers, politicians and other players look on from the wings, a 13 year old child, bearing within her a child she clearly does not want, once again occupies centre stage on this bitterly divisive issue, ironically now focused on a decision by the court to allow her ``the right to travel''.

Since this brutal act hit the headlines, powerful interest groups have been to the family. It is the father of the 13 year old who appears to be speaking for the women, but then women are only charged with the responsibility of the care and upbringing of children. They are rarely consulted on issues which may be of life and death to them.

While it may be morally righteous or admirable for groups to lend support to families in such circumstances as this, whatever the hidden agenda, it should be clear to those involved that defending the life of the future child cannot be limited to the embryonic development but must be extended to all initial stages of growth.

Thus the question must be asked of those now running back and forth to the Travellers camp, how many defended, or were even interested in, the life of the 13 year old at the centre of this controversy, once she was born?

We are informed that she was one of a family of twelve, living in utter dereliction in a shack parked at the side of a road. The shack had no windows, water or electricity. She lived all of her 13 years, as most travellers live, with the constant companion of cold, hunger, abuse and hostility.

Those scurrying back and forth to this hell on earth seem to place more value on life before birth, than the brutal existence which must have been her life after birth. She is one of the 22,000 who, through lack of proper sites, live in overcrowded unsanitary conditions by the sides of roads.

It is a community with the highest infant mortality rate and the lowest life expectancy.

It is a community despised by locals, barred from pubs and shops and subjected to the most vicious racist abuse, oftimes organised by politicians seeking votes.

It is not even generally known that the Travelling community is a distinct ethnic group in Ireland, with their own customs, traditions, style of speech and way of life which is largely misunderstood by those of us in the settled community.

The past thirty years has produced profound changes in all of society but particularly for travellers. The horse has been replaced by the motor, the tent and wagon by the trailers. The traditional economic base has been wiped out and with it many of the skills peculiar to the travelling community.

While most travellers have managed to adapt to such changes, they cannot cope with the attempts by well meaning communities to settle or assimilate them. Nor can they cope with the restrictions imposed on their traditional nomadic mode of life. As a result, they are forced, like the North American Indians, into a way of life that is alien to them, their culture and their very existence.

The brutality of such a life forces travellers to pit their wits against each other but also against those who are on the bottom rung of the ladder with them. They are truly the dispossessed, who are not even permitted the luxury of a temporary piece of ground at the side of a road.

The chain of events surrounding the alleged violent rape of this 13 year old child, has not only focused attention on the issue of life before birth, but more importantly on the fundamental issue of the quality of life after birth. Those concerned with pro-life and pro-choice movements must accept that life cannot only be a biological reproduction but the creation of an individual.

In a context, which is both emotional and social If society is not ready to help to take responsibility for the future child to grow and mature, then society must address the question, however painful of ``the right not to be born''.

How many silent and concealed deaths of infants have occurred among the poor in both the settled and travelling communities because the conditions for survival were impossible? How many women wept for the loss? We must remove this chalice from this 13 year old. She has suffered enough.

A to Z of abortion

by Meadbh Gallagher

Post-liberal Ireland was walking down the street the other day. It had just been declared and was full of itself. Quite expansive. It was on top of things - willing to consider anything, wishing to bestow compassion on everything.

A 13-year-old girl, raped, pregnant, stopped it in its tracks. She needed an abortion it would not provide.

A trial began under the full glare of publicity. A jury of millions was selected. Several of them, from all walks of life, spoke publicly of their horror at the circumstances of the case. Then they passed judgement, beyond all reasonable doubt in their own minds.

The girl was committed to the biggest institution in the state to determine her sentence. There, she was called `C' and assigned a case number. She was but a shadow of herself.

In another place, she was being taken care of. Those charged with her care belonged to another institution of the state. An emergency meeting was proposed by its leading members, calling on it to protect the life of the unborn in the girl's womb.

Days passed. Politicians spoke at length trying their best to say nothing. Shocktroops led by a man in a four-wheel-drive jeep were seen in the vicinity.

A group of people who once brought the state to court claiming that welfare for unmarried mothers was depriving good families of state funds were seen leading the shocktroops.

The issue was one of competing rights, observers said. The rights of the parents, the child, the unborn, the Eastern Health Board, the Children's Court, pressure groups, the media, the right to privacy - all got a look in.

The belief in the right to rape was not brought into question. Attitudes towards girls and women and children which led to rape were not put on trial.

In 1992, a 14-year-old girl, raped, pregnant, was also brought to the highest institutions in the state to determine her future. That was shortly after liberal Ireland had been declared. It too was stopped in its tracks.

Since then, at least 65,000 girls and women from Ireland have had abortions in Britain. But the jury has not been troubled with these cases.

Up to the 1970s, girls and women found with unwanted pregnancies in Ireland were also committed to institutions in the state. Another institution, the Church - both Catholic and Protestant varieties of it - was charged with their care.

The methods were different but the bottom line was the same: judgement was passed and the sentence of penal servitude in places like the Magdalen laundries was served.

The right to control over girl's and women's bodies is the common denominator between past and present. Though girls and women daily assert their right to have abortions, daily too complete strangers assert their right to pass judgement on them.

How many more cases will be hauled before the jury before it realises it has no jurisdiction in this matter? How much of the alphabet, how many case numbers?