Travelling rights
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.
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