Dr. Catherine Conlon:

Again, based on our data from the service user perspective, the women we spoke to had all been subject to that model of dating of pregnancy. My own PhD study looked at women who had experienced undetected or concealed pregnancies so it is something I would have extensive experience of researching. Women were talking about the missed period. If one has a regular cycle, that is the first indication of a pregnancy. As Senator Clifford-Lee has said, even if a woman has the pregnancy detected within a couple of days of a missed period, the dating of that pregnancy will already be four weeks.