Dublin, Ireland - Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland ordered a church-run pregnancy counseling service Thursday to stop distributing a government-funded pamphlet that presents abortion as an option.
The bishops' intervention reopened long-simmering arguments in this predominantly Catholic country, where abortion is outlawed but readily available in neighboring England.
At the conclusion of a three-day meeting, the bishops criticized the contents of the "Positive Options" pamphlet produced by the government-backed Crisis Pregnancy Agency and instructed the church's own Cura agency to stop distributing it.
Archbishop Sean Brady, reading a statement on behalf of bishops in all 26 dioceses, said the pamphlet portrays abortion as "a positive option," and makes it easier for Irish women to get information about abortion clinics in Britain.
Cura, the largest pregnancy counseling service in Ireland, declined to comment. For three decades, its counselors have encouraged pregnant women to have their babies. They also offer support to women who have had abortions in England.
The agency receives $725,000 annually from the Crisis Pregnancy Agency and is supposed to distribute the pamphlet to people it counsels. It includes details of seven other agencies that will give contact details for abortion clinics.
Last month, Cura directors dismissed four volunteer counselors who had complained publicly about the pamphlet distribution. Catholic conservatives complained to Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and other church leaders.
The chief executive of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, Olive Braiden, said she was seeking an urgent meeting with leaders of Cura, which received its state funding as part of a contract that runs through 2006 that requires cooperation with other counseling groups.
Three referendums on abortion in the past two decades have failed to find national consensus.
In 1983, voters overwhelmingly backed a constitutional amendment that barred legislators from passing any law to loosen the abortion ban. But tens of thousands of Irish women have overcome the ban by going to England to have abortions legally.
Successive governments have refused to enact a law in line with a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that abortion should be legal and offered in cases where a doctor deemed a woman's life at risk from continued pregnancy — including in cases of threatened suicide.
In 2002, voters narrowly rejected Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's proposal to legalize abortion in cases where continued pregnancy constituted a lethal risk.
Ahern shelved the legislation and created the Crisis Pregnancy Agency to coordinate support services. In 2003, Cura signed a contract with the agency that committed it to cooperate with the other groups.