Dr. Rhona Mahony:

With regard to Deputy Mathews's comments, I agree that, undoubtedly, women can suffer very grave psychiatric trauma because of having to have a termination of pregnancy. That is not at issue. The issue here is the risk to life because of suicide and suicidal ideation. I remind the Deputy that if a woman commits suicide, she dies and her baby dies too. I have no doubt that women find termination of pregnancy very painful. The issue of when life begins is really not for discussion today. We are talking about the substantial risk to maternal life in pregnancy.

The Deputy commented on the number of terminations performed elsewhere in the world. That is disingenuous and does not add anything to today's debate. We are not talking about termination of pregnancy for any reason; we are discussing termination of pregnancy within a very narrow and confined context of risk to life, where terminations of pregnancy are performed to save a woman's life. These instances are rare. In my hospital, which is one of the busiest maternity hospitals in Europe, we perform approximately up to five of these procedures every year. Please do not confuse us with figures of 7 million or other large numbers. That is disingenuous.