Parliamentary committee on abortion fails to agree

A 12 person parliamentary committee, set up last year to consider the Irish government's green paper on abortion, has failed to agree on any definitive course of action.

After reviewing 100 000 submissions, the committee issued a 700 page report outlining three possible options.

The first is, in essence, no change to current legislation. After a 1992 Supreme Court decision, abortion is permissible where there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as distinct from the health, of …