Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Some witnesses would not even say whether or how often they had been involved in taking other people's lives. There was a remarkable tendency of people who, the public might think, favour just limited abortion from an expert perspective not to want to limit the scope or the definition of the disabilities involved. They did not want to see things confined to so-called foetal cases, although we should all reject such disrespectful terminology, and they did not and do not want time limits. Their spoken or unspoken demand in their supposedly expert testimony has been for abortion on request. We heard no evidence from physicians who believe that the eighth amendment and current legislative provisions have actually hurt their ability to give optimum care. The witnesses did not point to a single case in which they had given less than optimum care because of the eighth amendment. There was no victim of that less-than-optimum care supposedly being provided under the eighth amendment, according to their testimony. There was no evidence of any initiative under the criminal law to constrain doctors who gave good health care, including in cases in which it was impossible to save the life of the unborn child. We had all this talk of chilling effects, criminalisation and doctors not being able to give good health care without any single such case. This is why there was a dishonesty in the invocation of the tragedy of Savita Halappanavar. What the inquest clearly showed was that the doctors failed to treat that unfortunate person because it was not apparent to them that she was physically ill or that there was that risk at the time. That is there in black and white in the incest. That is why it was so wrong to suggest what they suggested, and it really showed that they did not have cases to which they could point to show that the eighth amendment is not helping doctors keep the balance right because there are two patients-----