Dr. Seán Ó Domhnaill:

Having gone through the heads of the Bill, it scared the living daylights out of me. That was my response and I communicated that to many people I know. I felt it was extremely loose and the terms used were poorly defined, with many of the them not defined at all. There were many omissions and I came to the conclusion that this is not the protection of human life in pregnancy Bill, it is the legalisation of the killing of one of the two patients in obstetrics Bill.

On morbidity and mortality, for women who have had terminations, the figures vary. In 16 years of psychiatry, and I am not someone who is not extremely busy, I have never come across a case of a woman who has killed herself because she was refused an abortion, either in my own practice or in the practice of anyone I have ever worked with, and I have worked in at least 20 different psychiatric units.

I have, however, dealt with the families of people who have ended their lives as a direct result of having a termination. In 1992, the year of the X case, I had the unpleasant experience of losing a colleague on the anniversary of her abortion. These are the forgotten people. In the psychiatry textbook I used, by Professor Basant Puri, the quotation that always struck me, because the word "only" was used, according to a chapter written by two female British psychiatrists, only 10% of women who undergo abortions suffer severe and/or protracted sequelae from abortion. That suggests nearly 20,000 women per year in Britain and at least 400 women per year in Ireland. Where are they going and who are they going to? I treat probably more post-abortion women than anyone else in the country by virtue of the fact that I am an easily identifiable pro-life person who understands the trauma associated with abortion. They avoid the doctors who sent them, and they certainly avoid the clinics that sent them, because they feel they have been let down and not informed and were never given any indication at any point they could end up severely depressed or suicidal as a result of having an abortion. Anyone who really cares about the welfare of women in this country should consider that as he or she looks at this legislation.