Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman. I appreciate that.

I noted the comment about Denmark. So much could be said about that. It is not just the Irish Government; Deputy McGrath at first in his comment was too charitable to the Danish ambassador. The Danish ambassador did not point out that 133 scanned babies were aborted with Down's syndrome, compared with four who went on to be born.

I never said it was government policy; I said it was the policy of the great and the good. However, Denmark has led the way with its scanning of children with Down's syndrome and it is simply disingenuous not to say that it is the preferred policy. Perhaps we can leave that for another day.

On the question of criminalisation, it is interesting that the same people who opposed looking at the Citizens' Assembly's report, despite the fact of it being in the mandate that was given to us, nonetheless have wanted to open up the question of decriminalisation even though the Citizens' Assembly chose not to deal with that. "Hypocritical" might be too strong a word, but certainly "inconsistent" is not. In my view, there has been a great deal of hypocrisy about criminalisation. I wish to say on the record, and I probably speak for Deputies Fitzpatrick and Mattie McGrath, although they can speak eloquently for themselves, that I would never want to see women targeted by the criminal law in what are already very difficult situations. However, the criminal law does not exist just to put people in prison. It exists to prevent certain behaviours that can hurt people themselves or others. In fact, to my almost certain knowledge, no woman has been criminalised in this jurisdiction. In abortion jurisdictions, including Britain, abortion remains a criminal offence.

Looking at this from the point of view of women's health, to suggest that it would be a good idea to remove the legal prohibition, backed up by a theoretical criminal sanction that does not operate to be targeted at women, would do no service to women's health. Of course, it would be a rogue's charter for those medics and semi-medics who have no problem carrying out abortions.

On the subject of the right to health, does the baby not have a right to health too? Is it not the case that our medical practice, which has always been among the best in the world, shows that the protections which always existed even prior to 2013 to allow doctors to engage in life saving treatment have been used by doctors to protect women, even sometimes involving losing the baby? Is it not the reality that the threat to a person's life does not have to be imminent? Is it not the reality that the law is protecting medics in their decisions? The evidence of that, and they were unable to show to the contrary, is that the law has not come after them and their judgments have not been second-guessed. We have been fed a great deal of rhetoric about fear of criminalisation but no evidence that it has ever happened. Is there anybody so blind as those who do not wish to see? Unfortunately, no committee member ever conceded that the baby's health is something that ought to be protected.

On the question of trusting women, I like to think that I trust men and women equally in the society in which I live. The reason we have laws of any type is that we back up trust with precaution. That is the reason to have laws, when one thinks about it. Has Deputy Kelleher any interest in exploring whether the eighth amendment saved lives? The elephant in the room is the apparent massive disparity in our abortion rate and that of Britain. Senator Gavan constantly tried to say that we do not know what Irish abortion rates are. However, if we are honest, the most active abortion campaigners have not tried to claim that we have abortion rates that are in reality comparable to Britain's. Our rate is about one quarter of its rate. This committee was never interested in saying that we should look at whether laws prohibiting abortion have a protective effect. Instead it listened to abortion proponents such as the Guttmacher Institute try to tell us in general terms, without looking at Ireland and Britain, that criminalisation of abortion does not reduce rates. The evidence to the contrary is as plain as the noses on our faces.