Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The psychiatrists said that if a woman is in a very distressed situation, and anxious, which is very understandable, and says that she does not wish to accept the medical treatment they may offer, the only way left to avert the risk of suicide is to certify this as a lawful procedure. That goes against the hippocratic oath. They explained that dilemma to us. Furthermore, when the psychiatrists have certified that the procedure has been complied with, the obstetrician receives that certificate to carry out the procedure. They said that this is a dilemma that is repugnant also to their hippocratic oath, knowing that their fellow doctors have been, as it were, checkmated into that situation. This is a very grave matter. It was brought out in the hearings. It is a matter of enormous weight that a human life - that of a little baby, maybe under 15 weeks - can be ended. Another doctor, Mr. James Sheehan, who with Maurice Neligan and others founded the Blackrock, Galway and Hermitage clinics, and who has given more than 50 years' medical service to families, to men, to women and to babies - to everybody throughout his career - said only yesterday, with the wisdom of a long career, "Peter, when people terminate a pregnancy at that stage, it is killing an unborn baby, and you are to use that word, because we in the profession have to do that procedure. It is killing an unborn baby." That is very sad. That is why, at the core, I cannot support this Bill.

We have heard different discussions about the legal situation and we have been misled. I want to read into the record the following article that appeared in the Sunday Business Post, written by Dr. Maria Cahill under the headline "There is no legal requirement for suicide exemptions":

Although the European Court of Human Rights specifically requested that Ireland provide legal clarity in relation to lawful medical treatments in pregnancy, the political rhetoric surrounding the introduction of the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill has been a model of legal obfuscation.

The government has been keen to emphasise that it is obliged to legislate to introduce abortion on the grounds of suicidal intent, and both the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, and the Minister for Health, James Reilly, have, on countless occasions, presented this 'obligation' as deriving from law: from the Constitution, the European Court of Human Rights or the Supreme Court.

As long as this political rhetoric about legal obligation holds sway, frank debate about the terms and merits of the legislation is almost impossible. Indeed, so long as this political rhetoric is unchallenged, there is no necessity for the minister to present the legislation as medically justifiable and legally legitimate; he can simply say that he has no choice.

Is the government constitutionally obliged to legislate for a Supreme Court judgment? No, as a matter of law. The Constitution gives permission to the Dáil and the Seanad to legislate, rather than imposing such an obligation on them. There are examples dating all the way back to 1965 of the court establishing that various rights exist, only to have 14 successive governments decline, in the lawful exercise of their discretion, to legislate to provide an express statutory footing for these rights.

The only constitutional obligation is that legislation must remain within the terms of the Constitution. In this instance, the right to life protected in Article 40.3.3 must be fully vindicated.

Is the government legally obliged to legislate for a suicide-based exemption from the right to life because of the European Court of Human Rights ruling in the case of ABC v Ireland? No, as a matter of law. The rules of the committee of ministers require that Ireland should adopt measures that are "effective for preventing the recurrence" of the breach that was found in the case of ABC v. Ireland.

Applicant C, following an internet search, diagnosed that her cancer might return during her pregnancy, and then went to England to have an abortion. She was not suicidal. A suicide-based exemption from the right to life would not have clarified her legal position at all.

Apart from the fact that the Oireachtas is under no constitutional obligation to legislate for the X case, is a future court bound by that precedent to allow suicide-based exemptions from the right to life? No, as a matter of law. The X case is in a separate category of judicial decisions because of what it did not decide. As every first-year law student learns, a precedent is only binding in relation to the points that were decided in the case. All the points that were “entirely overlooked or conceded without argument" are not part of the decision, as the Supreme Court itself ruled in 1965. If a point is not argued before the judge, the judge cannot make a decision on that point, and there is therefore no precedent on that point. If it were to be otherwise - if precedents could be made based on what the judges did not decide in court - then we would not be living under the rule of law.

I sat in the Chair yesterday and heard Deputies making their speeches, very importantly because of the gravity of the Bill and the responsibility on our shoulders. Those in the medical profession have vindicated the lives of mothers and children, and more beyond, through their superb service, making Ireland one of the safest places in the world to be a patient or to be looked after in the course of pregnancy. The Minister of State should read and re-read the article I have read out, because it shows that there is no necessity to legislate. In a telephone conversation this morning Mr. James Sheehan of the Blackrock Clinic said that the men and women who are his peers qualified before and around the time of legislation for abortion in England, and they know exactly what happened in England: young doctors did not wish to go into obstetrics and gynaecology as a speciality and there was a fall-off in the numbers going into those disciplines, because this legislation was at variance with their hippocratic oath and with all their good instincts to serve society, families and people. Introducing such a legal framework here will almost certainly have the same result.

Another person who told me she was against this legislation is Sister Consilio Fitzgerald, who runs Cuan Mhuire. She has served Ireland and dealt with the fallout from abortions, including the addictions that often follow abortions. She is a midwife too, by the way. People do not know that. She knows that no expectant mother ever wanted for the best attention and for everything necessary to save her life.

I go back to the repugnant dilemma that this law puts on psychiatrists and obstetricians in certifying the unavoidability of suicide. I want to read into the Official Report, on a matter of personal conscience, the letter I wrote to the Taoiseach last Friday:

Re: Personal Conscience and Passage of Proposed Legislation for Abortion in Ireland under The Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013 and Articles in Bunreacht na hÉireann.

Dear Taoiseach Enda,

I have carefully considered the above Bill and Bunreacht na hÉireann.

In recognition of the deeply and sincerely held conscientious reservations of many Fine Gael Parliamentary Party members (Legislators) and in accordance with Article 115 (page 8) of the EPP Party Platform Document adopted by Fine Gael at the EPP Statutory Congress, Bucharest, Romania, 17-18 October 2012 which states:

"We consider that it is necessary to respect the right of conscientious objection.",

the only reasonable and correct basis for voting in respect of the proposed Legislation is that there should be a Free Vote, without imposition of a Whip, for each Fine Gael Parliamentary Party member, out of respect for the informed personal conscience of Legislators in voting on such important proposed Legislation which goes to the core and impacts directly Articles 40.3.1, 40.3.2, 40.3.3, 15.5.2, and 28.3.3 of the Constitution all of which Articles deal with matters of Life and basic Human Rights.

I respectfully ask that you would support a Free Vote for each Fine Gael Parliamentary Party member out of respect for informed personal conscience during passage of the above Bill.

I wish to assure you of my loyalty to Fine Gael, traditional Fine Gael values and the values of the EPP.

I fully respect your Presidency of the Fine Gael Party, your Leadership of the Fine Gael Party and your Office of Taoiseach of the Government of the Republic of Ireland.

Please accept my kindest personal best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Peter Mathews.

The Minister for Health also received this letter. When doctors qualify they voluntarily take the hippocratic oath to serve the people of this country. We too make a solemn prayer every morning before the commencement of business in the House:

Direct, we beseech Thee, O Lord, our actions by Thy holy inspirations and carry them on by Thy gracious assistance; that every word and work of ours may always begin from Thee, and by Thee be happily ended; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is not a Catholic badge to put on the oath to which doctors swear from the time of Hippocrates, 500 years before Christianity. This is basic philosophy on the dignity of human life.

At the public hearings on abortion, people who had the experience of abortion had asked to give their gentle and truthful testimony but were declined. Some of those people attempted suicide after their abortions. They now have teenage and adult children. They could have told us of their first-hand experience what this law seeks to address, yet they were declined. We have a Bill going through on prostitution and prostitutes were listened to. This is not right. I hope we are in a civilised society and everyone understands the gravity of what we are about. I hope everybody has - I expected the same when I joined this House - the right to speak on matters as grave as this.

Since Thursday, I have received over 100 letters, texts, e-mails and phone calls from doctors who said this Bill is wrong. The last letter I got today was from a consultant gynaecologist, Dr. Courtney, with 35 years' experience who was in charge of Cavan hospital. In it he stated:

I worked for 35 years as a consultant with the best results in Ireland and the UK and was never curtailed by law to save women's lives.

Wars come and go. Famines come and go. But abortion comes and stays and eats its way into the heart of a people as it has done in England. Seven thousand, four hundred [abortions] in 1966. One hundred and fifty thousand in 1972. Two hundred thousand today.

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