Mr. Frank Callanan:

I thank the committee for allowing me to make a submission to it. It is 21 years since the Attorney General v. X was decided and it is useful to recall the order of the High Court. That was restraining the first defendant from leaving the jurisdiction for a period of nine months or from procuring or arranging a termination of pregnancy or abortion either within or without the jurisdiction. That was the order appealed from. There had been an earlier ex parte order which resulted in X and her parents returning from London where they were arranging for the termination of her pregnancy.

There has been a great deal of talk about the fact that there was no psychiatrist in the case. There was what is described as a very experienced child psychologist whose evidence was of an extremely cogent kind, most strikingly as set forth in the judgment of the Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Finlay. He had told the High Court that when he had interviewed the girl he wanted to have a continuing discussion with her parents but did not have anybody available to sit with her in his waiting room. His view, on his past experience, of the risk of her committing suicide was so real that however inappropriate it might have been he asked her to remain in the room while he discussed the problem with her parents.

It is well also to recall that the judgment of the then Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Finlay, contained in a single, plain, unadorned but forceful paragraph, invokes the preamble to the Irish Constitution where it is stated:

We, the people ... seeking to promote the common good, with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity [which Chief Justice Finlay emphasised], so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained ... Do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution.

In the passage leading into the formulation of the test the then Chief Mr. Justice Finlay, said the court must, among the matters to be so regarded, concern itself with the position of the mother within a family group, with persons on whom she is dependent, with, in other instances, persons who are dependent upon her and her interaction with other citizens and members of society in the areas in which her activities occur. He went from that to formulate the test of a real and substantial risk to the life, rather than the health, of the mother. That is how the then Chief Justice Mr. Justice Finlay, dealt with what he characterised as the intimate human problem of the right of the unborn to life and its relationship to the right of the mother of an unborn child to her life.

Some pro-life advocates have strenuously denied that Attorney General v. X was correctly decided, particularly in extending the principle of a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother to suicide. That is an argument which they are perfectly entitled to make. However, I do not believe, and this separates me from Professor Binchy and Dr. Cahill, that a lawyer who believes that Attorney General v. X was wrongly decided can credibly or responsibly approach the question of the constitutional position in Ireland in relation to abortion on the basis of a denial that the decision of the Supreme Court in Attorney General v. X represents at the present time, until such time as it is departed from by the Supreme Court or there is a further amendment by referendum of the Constitution, an authoritative statement of the constitutional position. This might seem a fine distinction but it is clear. One is perfectly entitled to disagree with the judgment of the Supreme Court but that does not entitle a lawyer to deny that the law in Ireland is as expounded by the Supreme Court in Attorney General v. X, that is to say that the termination of the pregnancy is constitutionally permissible where it is established as a matter of probability that there was a real and substantial risk to the life of a mother if the termination was not effected. The obligation to accept that this is at the present time the constitutional position is something that is bound up with the sovereign, independent and democratic nature of this State.

The decision of the Supreme Court in Attorney General v. X was affirmed in the clearest terms three years later in the reference to the Supreme Court under Article 26 of the Constitution of the Regulation of Information (Services Outside the State For Termination of Pregnancies) Bill 1995. That was the Bill that sought to prescribe the conditions under which information relating to services lawfully available in another State could be provided as contemplated by the fourteenth amendment. In the single judgment of the Supreme Court given by the then Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Hamilton, the judgments of the Supreme Court in Attorney General v. X, particularly that of the former Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Finlay, are relied upon throughout.

The court was specifically invited in that case including with reference to the fact-----