Ms Marie O'Shea:

I will address those questions in the reverse. When the Senator says the statute does not address people who are somehow encouraging people to have abortions, the criminalisation section of the statute is sufficiently broad enough to address that.

In terms of the provision of misleading information, when somebody is provided with a scan at a centre that is holding itself out to be pro-abortion and is told unequivocally that they are earlier in the pregnancy than they are when the scan is looked at or when they have a second subsequent scan somewhere else, that is quite a clear-cut case where a person has provided misleading information, has delayed care and has tried to interfere with somebody's reproductive autonomy.

I acknowledge in the report as regards the three-day wait what the policy of the Legislature was, which was so that people did not make a decision in haste and later regret it. What is being proposed in the report is not taking away from anybody the right to have that reflection period. In a world where I think we can accept that women have the capacity to make decisions, to weigh up the evidence and to say, "I am not quite sure today. I would like to take the opportunity to come back on the next occasion", there is no threat to persons who have had the experience the Senator mentions, who decided against having a termination of pregnancy and who decided they would continue with the pregnancy. There would be enough safeguards in there to protect those people.

Nobody has any idea whatsoever of how many numbers are involved. The Senator referred to the data that we relied on that came out of the IFPA and START, they are publications that are all in peer-reviewed journals. You do not get into peer-reviewed journals without the methodology being rigorously applied. Those peer-reviewed articles have to be reviewed by several academics to make sure they are rigorous and that they are able to go into those journals, because those journals have their own reputations to uphold.