Mr. Michael Nugent:

We are here because the 1983 amendment to the Constitution has constrained our public ethics. We should not need three days of parliamentary hearings to discuss how a doctor in a hospital should save the life of a dying woman. That should be the absolute minimum rock-bottom ethical standard that we should automatically assume from our health system. A, B and C v. Ireland requires the Oireachtas to vindicate this right, but it does not require it to limit itself to only doing this. The committee should not ignore the suffering of pregnant women whose health is at risk, who are victims of rape or incest, or whose foetuses have a fatal abnormality. As well as its other work here, the committee should recommend removal of the 1983 constitutional amendment so that the Government can democratically decide, in the absence of such restraints, on public policies that are appropriate for the Ireland of 2012.

As atheists, we ask the committee to respect our human right to freedom of conscience. As atheists, we form our own individual ethical beliefs, including on issues such as abortion. However, there is one belief which unites us, which is that we do not get our morality from gods and therefore our laws should not be based on what other people believe the creator of the universe is telling them to impose on us. For example, Cardinal Brady has explicitly told the Members of the Oireachtas that, as legislators, they should remember that the right to life is conferred on us by the creator. The committee members should think about the enormity of that claim and the lack of evidence to support it, and its irrelevance to the committee's deliberations and their duties as legislators - as opposed to in their personal lives - because, even if one believes that there must be a creator, as many of the members do, there is no pathway from that belief to the taking of any particular specific ethical position on these issues. One cannot argue that the universe had a beginning and therefore it must have had a creator and therefore we cannot legislate for abortion. There is no relationship of cause and effect between those ideas. We do not get our morality from religion; we apply our own natural morality to religion.

What we, as Atheist Ireland, are asking the committee to do in its deliberations is to ensure that whatever laws the Oireachtas passes are based on human rights and compassion and on the application of reason to empirical evidence. We ask the Oireachtas to respect the idea that individual ethical decisions should be made on the basis of personal autonomy and individual conscience, with respect for the rights of others, and to respect the idea that individual ethical decisions on the issue of abortion and pregnancy should be made by pregnant women in consultation with their medical teams.

We also ask the Oireachtas to consider specific human rights issues with regard to the matters the committee is discussing. In Attorney General v. X and others, the court stated that the risk to life must be "real and substantial" but it need not be "inevitable or immediate". In A, B and C v. Ireland, the court stated that obtaining an abortion abroad constitutes a significant psychological burden on pregnant women.

In A, B and C the court found that obtaining an abortion abroad constitutes a significant psychological burden on pregnant women. In D, the Government stated it was an open question as to whether a pregnant woman with a fatal foetal abnormality has a right to an abortion. Ireland is obliged under various international human rights conventions to respect the equal right of women to health and physical and psychological integrity. The 1983 amendment is incompatible with our human rights obligations and it discriminates against women on the grounds of physical and mental health. The court has already ruled in the X case that a suicidal woman has a right to an abortion in Ireland.

Members have a duty to legislate to vindicate that right but I urge them not to pass a restrictive law which assumes pregnant women are lying. If they do that they run the risk that another personal tragedy will happen. A suicidal women who is denied an abortion may go on to commit suicide. This could be followed by public outrage and the law may finally be changed but it would be too late for that woman. It took a raped female child to establish the right to legal abortion in Ireland. It has taken the death of a miscarrying woman to bring us to these hearings. I ask Members to stop this unethical pattern of law making by response to personal tragedies and not to limit themselves to the minimal response to X, A, B and C, D and the report of the expert group. Please legislate comprehensively based on human rights and compassion. Respect the right of religious people to believe in their gods and to live their lives in accordance with their religious values without imposing these values on pregnant women who do not share them.