Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is concerning. I get that the Minister might make a decision to be no more specific than he has been about the source of his legal advice. If it is from the Attorney General that is fair enough. Regarding the doctors, I can only ask the Minister to share with us which doctors are informing him. He mentioned the chief medical officer. I take that as his reply.

The Minister said I was being selective. I do not think I was being selective; I was being specific. I am very well aware there are grounds in sections 9(1)(a), (b) and (c). I do not see how sections 9(1)(a) and (b) change the question of whether the right word here is "appropriate" or "necessary". I do not think I was avoiding any inconvenient facts in not delaying the debate. Nobody would want me to read out each of those lines. The point is that in section 10, the word used is "necessary" and in section 9 the word used is "appropriate" but it occurs in a section that is discussing medical assessment. Medicine is either objective or it is not. If it is the case that "appropriate" is here because there is an element of choice coming into this the Minister should come out and say it. In other words, as I said earlier, there are the section 12 grounds for abortion, which have nothing to do with medicine, although it is being delivered in a medical context. It is elective and not in any way intended to be life saving, health saving or therapeutic, if we want to use that word, as most of us here are laypersons.

We are discussing the grounds on which the Minister is making it acceptable to have unborn children aborted in later term up to viability, which is a very advanced stage of human development. We are talking about human beings all of the way through. We are definitely talking about very visible to the naked eye and developed human beings and it is important that we take our time on this. If the Minister is saying to me the use of the word "appropriate" is there so as to facilitate a more subjective judgment as to whether the abortion should be carried out then I am very troubled by it because this is a departure from objective medicine. This is supposed to be a therapeutic abortion. This is supposed to be the exception that allows abortion beyond 12 weeks, and it already troubles a lot of people that it would be available without reason up to 12 weeks. Many people, well over 50% if we look at opinion polls since the referendum in terms of "Yes" voters, are very uneasy about this if it is introducing a subjective element, in other words if this is taking a bit of section 12 into section 9. If this is what is intended, in other words, to make abortions easier to happen or more likely to happen by substituting the word "appropriate" for "necessary" then it is very troubling. It is troubling not just to people who voted "No" on 25 May. It will also be troubling to many people who voted "Yes". Is this the reason the word "appropriate" is going in here? The normal and traditional test of reasonable necessity for a medical intervention to save a life - not 100% absolutely necessary to use the Minister's language - in the 2013 legislation was not complained about by the Minister or others prior to the campaign to remove the eighth amendment. Is "necessity" not the word that ought to be here, unless what the Minister is seeking to do is to import an element of subjectivity into the decision about whether an abortion should happen?