Professor William Binchy:

I ask Senator Crown to forgive me for concentrating on him. It is absolutely nothing personal, although I did sense a certain tinge in his presentation. Senator Crown mentioned that we have had two referendums already and asked how many more times we need to hear what the people have said. With respect, that is a serious reduction of the history of Irish constitutional referendums over the past 20 years, and I am surprised. I do not particularly like the term "pro-life", as opposed to "pro-choice", or any of these terms. The debate will not be won on the label, as members will appreciate. However, of those who describe themselves as pro-life, many - indeed, the majority - actually opposed the referendum that proposed the type of change the Senator mentioned in 1992. In 2002, a certain segment of that pro-life constituency also opposed the referendum in question. That is an important point, and if we are to give a nuanced history, it would be an injustice not to mention those facts. I also point out that one referendum took place 20 years ago and the other ten years ago, but we are now discussing a situation that has been precipitated by the European decision which asks for clarification in the law. It does not ask or insist - I say this again - that Ireland implement the decision in the X case. That is an absolutely crucial point.

Senator Colm Burke asked whether I am suggesting that the judge got it wrong or that, in his introduction to the expert group report, he said something that was not true. I am saying something different, which is that the judge, in the statement the Senator read out, gave the truth but it was a partial truth, because he quoted some of the decision and invited the reader to draw a conclusion. I think it is fair to say the reader would be likely to draw the conclusion that therefore we must implement the X case decision. That is the manner in which that quotation was used. If that is the effect of reading that particular text, it is a mistaken effect. I am simply pointing out the mistaken effect in question.

Finally, a point was made about principle. I made the argument, and I stand over it, that if we change the practice in Irish hospitals so that obstetricians are carrying out abortions on women who have no physical illness whatsoever and on unborn children who have no physical difficulty whatsoever on the basis of suicidal ideation, we very definitely will have changed the principles on which medical practice operates in this country. That shift in principle may not happen overnight but if, in those circumstances, it is possible to take an innocent unborn child's life, that constitutes a shift. As Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness mentioned - I hope I am not misrepresenting her by giving a summary of her summary - the X decision was packing in certain other grounds under the life ground because it was the only ground that was available in the circumstances. I hope I am not doing Mrs. Justice McGuinness an injustice in saying that. Already we can see the principle: if we can do it in one particular context, why not do it in other contexts? We are dealing with tragic human conditions. Any person of a humane disposition feels tremendously for the circumstances of the pregnant woman, and if one feels tremendously for a particular pregnant woman and agrees that one can take an innocent life in circumstances in which there is no medical condition, then I would respectfully say the principles have been changed and the culture will have been changed for the future.