Andanappa Yalagi, the father of Savita Halappanavar, looks at her wedding album at her house in Belgaum in the southern Indian state of Karnataka November 16, 2012. (Reuters/DANISH SIDDIQUI)

DUBLIN - Ireland will clarify its abortion laws within weeks, the government said on Tuesday, as it strives to answer criticism over the death of a woman who was refused an abortion of her dying foetus.

Abortions were banned in all circumstances in overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland by a 1983 constitutional amendment. But when the ban was challenged in 1992 by a 14-year-old rape victim, the Supreme Court ruled a termination was permitted when a woman’s life was at risk.

Successive governments have since failed to clarify the conditions under which the mother’s life could be judged to be at risk.