DUBLIN, Dec 3 (LSN)—The saga of the 13-year-old Irish girl who is pregnant and claims to have been raped took on a new life as her father revealed the circumstances around his daughter's removal from her parents care. In an interview on Radio Ireland the father said that his daughter was “kidnapped” by the Eastern Health Board without any permission from her parents.
The child was taken on an interim care order. “It was not a care order, we signed no forms, not even voluntary forms. My child was kidnapped from us. The EHB just came and snatched her and took her away in a car without permission from us,” he said. EHB officials denied the parents the right to visit privately with their daughter on Sunday, allowing only supervised visits wherein according to the mother, the 13- year-old was obviously intimidated by the EHB worker and thus unable to talk freely.
The parents admitted they, at first, agreed with their daughter's choice for an abortion but said that this decision was made under duress and in a state of shock. The father remarked, “They are taking away a grandchild. If my daughter doesn’t want to keep the baby then it can be adopted… There are plenty of people in this country who can’t have children, who’d like to adopt a baby. This is a life God gave. It is still a human being.”
Late Tuesday, the Irish government said it was setting up a cabinet sub-committee to look into abortion laws. The statement said the decision to hold the review was made “having considered the constitutional, legal, medical, moral, social and ethical issues which arise regarding abortion,” and that it was not related to the alleged rape case.