John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I must. Sometimes my colleagues here miss one point, which is that in western countries maternal mortality is an extraordinarily rare event. In Ireland in recent decades we have had entire years with no maternal mortality. The occurrence of one maternal mortality is a disaster. If we have to legislate to prevent one maternal mortality, we should do it. This is not like cancer or heart disease mortality, where there are thousands of deaths per year. This is different and we must treat it differently.

In the previous hearings, I got to the crux of the matter by putting the Dublin folks through a detailed interrogation. We worked out that, although figures are not kept, there are approximately 30 abortions per annum in Ireland within the legal parameters of our Constitution, that is, to preserve the life of the mother. They reckoned there were six to eight in each of the Dublin maternity hospitals and, with a little extrapolation, that is what we reckoned to be the probable total. I have asked some of my colleagues about this and my understanding is that the great majority of these will be for cardiovascular complications, blood pressure emergencies, renal failure emergencies, occasionally haemorrhage and sometimes cancer.

Incidentally, in a long career of practising cancer medicine I have never had to send anybody for an abortion to save their life. It is not typically the way it happens. Many of my patients have made a decision to have an abortion and I have supported them in their decision, but I have never said to them that they need it to save their life.

Of the 30 cases per annum, the great majority will fall into the categories I outlined. My best guess, and I ask my colleagues to comment on this, is that in the majority of those cases it is not a sudden, out-of-the-blue event where a previously normal healthy pregnancy suddenly deteriorates. There is usually a warning - the woman has had pre-eclampsia, which is a blood pressure and kidney problem occurring in pregnancy, or it is discovered that the placenta is dangerously misplaced or that there is cancer-----