Professor William Binchy:

Yes, let us go the modern age and indeed to the future. Several speakers asked whether we are bound by the constitutional provision that says that a Supreme Court judgment is final. Senator Katherine Zappone spoke about the references in the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in A, B and C v. Ireland to the need to implement in accordance with the existing constitutional provisions. Forgive me, but I think I have dealt with these points before. I will, however, make them again. The Supreme Court judgment in the X case, like any Supreme Court judgment, is of course the law of the land. There is no dispute about that; we are not challenging the legitimacy of the decision at a fundamental constitutional level. There are no constitutional coups here, to use the expression of Senator John Crown. That does not deprive us, however, as part of the democratic process, from critiquing a decision. I will return to history for a moment, if I may, because it is enlightening. There was a case, some 35 years ago, in which the Supreme Court interpreted the Adoption Act in a particular way. We had a referendum and everything was fine thereafter. It is absolutely reasonable for the democracy to respond to a Supreme Court decision. I beg members not to proceed on the basis that they have to implement the Supreme Court decision. They emphatically do not. With respect to Senator Zappone, who has read the judgment from the European Court of Human Rights, nor does that court require us to implement the X decision. On the contrary, it requires us to have clarity in our law. Moreover, it specifically says that it is up to states to develop their law in this particular area.

There is no right under the convention to abortion and we are perfectly free in this area to bring in a legal system which, going back to what I mentioned again and again, corresponds to the existing practice in medical hospitals. Our side of the argument is emphatically empirical, emphatically on the basis of what is happening already in Irish hospitals. Those who are proposing that the law be changed are proposing a change of culture in this area. That change of culture will involve the intentional taking or termination of the life of an innocent human being. It is a radical change in Irish society. Since independence, no such proposal has come before the Oireachtas; nor, indeed, has it come from the wider community that there should be such a proposal. I strongly repeat that what we are looking for here is something emphatically simple to provide, namely, that existing medical practice be given legal support and there be no change to the system and culture in this country.