Dr. Seán Ó Domhnaill:

Several people asked the same question: what was the huge fear surrounding the suicide scenario in relation to the X case? Of course, the reason for it is that the X case judgment superficially dealt with abortion for suicidal risk. There was no medical evidence provided before the Supreme Court in 1992. That led to a seriously flawed judgment, in my opinion, because the experts on the assessment of suicidal risk are consultant psychiatrists. The evidence that was given to the Supreme Court at that time was given by a child and adolescent sex therapist - probably not the best place to go looking for advice on suicide.

The real concern is that our cultural cousins in the United Kingdom and the USA have had the experience of seeing the so-called floodgates opened in relation to suicide. In 1966, the year before the Abortion Act in Britain, the overwhelming majority of abortions were carried out under cover of the 1938 Rex v. Bourne Act, where Sir Alex Bourne had carried out an abortion on a rape victim to protect her health. Those were the grounds up until 1966. Following the passage of the Abortion Act in 1967, within 12 months of its enactment, over 95% of all applications for abortion were on risk of suicide. In the United States, the exact same thing has happened. We have gone from a situation of 80,000 abortions in 1966 to over 190,000, most of those being on the grounds of risk of suicide.