Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I am not satisfied with the response of either Minister on these amendments. Many people who have anti-abortion views that differ considerably from my pro-choice position would feel that this aspect of the matter needs to be addressed. I do not think either Minister is doing that sufficiently. The Minister for Justice and Equality has described what we are subjecting women to as intolerable cruelty. The United Nations and other organisations have defined it as being akin to torture. It is cruel and degrading to force a woman to continue with a pregnancy, being congratulated by people, etc., even though she knows she will have no baby at the end of it. Such horrendous cruelty is beyond imagination. Approximately 1,500 individuals and their partners go through this every year. I do not accept that further delays in dealing with this are needed. The responses of the Ministers have made me more convinced that we can provide for this from a couple of points of view.

The Minister, Deputy Reilly, made the point that the purpose of this Bill is to clarify existing rights, basically as set out in the X case judgment, in legislation. That is the backdrop to the introduction of this Bill. Nothing in that statement precludes us from providing for terminations in other areas. The Government has a choice. It has chosen not to use this opportunity to include such a provision. The Minister of State highlighted clearly the argument made by the State in the D case. It is important to remind the committee that the State referred in that instance to "the potential" or scope for "further development of the law" and said serious consideration would be given to that possibility. Basically, the State was saying it is possible to provide for terminations in this scenario within the confines of our existing constitutional arrangement. I would argue there is always a risk with everything we do constitutionally. I would prefer to take that risk, to be honest.

I would not normally trust the Supreme Court, but it came up with the original X case ruling which provided that the risk to a woman's life does not need to be "immediate" or "inevitable". I do not think that aspect of the judgment has been fully factored into this Bill. The court was able to interpret the law in that regard. I would be quite confident that the court could facilitate a provision such as that we are proposing. A great deal of legal opinion would agree that it is possible to legislate for this within the confines of the Constitution. Rather than merely offering sympathy to pregnant women in these circumstances, should we not err on the side of legislating in this manner in deference to them?

A total of 90% of the population agree that this should be provided for and we could do it but the Minister is choosing not to do it. In terms of inevitable miscarriage, the HSE report on the death of Savita Halappanavar identified this legal area as being a problem. We have a problem now with the way this Bill is drafted around the definition of the unborn. Providing that it existed from the moment of implantation, giving that an equal right to life, rules out the possibility for a woman or a girl of a termination for a fatal foetal abnormality which without that could have been brought in. We need to consider that and to take out that definition of the unborn.

It is outside the scope of this section but relates to it, I would be in favour of including definitions in the cases of incest and rape, and appropriately qualified medical practitioners. It would be better to define them in this part of the Act in order to deal later with the offences criteria. We are missing an opportunity here and that is not good enough.