Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will look seriously at the wording because if advice has been received to suggest that it could be problematic then I want to check it out. The terms are different and they are meant to be different if, for example, one puts the word "or" in front of it. I will come back to the Deputy on that but I will seek a legal opinion and revert to the committee. The sense was that the word "avert" was to clarify that the scale of risk of harm involved goes beyond that normally involved in a pregnancy and that an abortion would be allowed only where it is required to avoid such harm, but I will check out the reference to "or mitigate" which Deputy Kelly has brought to my attention through this amendment.

In terms of "serious harm", this was a point that was considered at some length during the drafting of the legislation. I take Deputy Coppinger's point that this was not in the Oireachtas committee report, but to be fully transparent, it was in the heads of the general scheme of the Bill I produced in March. I do not know about the Deputy but it was discussed by me and others when we were debating the issue. We had many arguments thrown at us on the question of what is health. What all of us campaigning on the "Yes" side were trying to do was to show that this was different from just an impact on one's health. We are talking here about a situation where a pregnant woman is gone beyond 12 weeks and where the 12 week indication is available without specific indication and she needs a termination to protect her health. We were trying to debunk some of the flippant examples that were given in relation to this situation. The committee did ask me on page 8 in the definition of risk not to define risk, so what we tried to do was not put serious risk in but instead tried to define health. Whether we got it right or not, that is what we tried to do. Instead of saying "serious risk to health" we said "risk of serious harm to health" which is a different thing. The qualification was included in section 10 to clarify from a legal perspective that the nature of the risk to a woman's health goes beyond the normal risk of harm to a woman's health which pregnancy would pose to even a healthy woman.

Deputy Coppinger rightly made the point earlier that pregnancy is a risk to one's health. Being pregnant is more risky from a health perspective than not being pregnant, so we were trying to clarify that this is above and beyond the normal risk to health that comes with being pregnant. For example, the risk would not include poor health from a respiratory tract infection or another easily treated ailment which could harm a woman's health while she was pregnant but which would obviously not have sufficiently serious consequences for that woman to justify a termination of pregnancy being carried out. Unlike some, I do not believe women go through with terminations for easy reasons. These are things people think through as they are very serious decisions so I am not in any way attaching a value, judgment or a view on the decisions women make but we felt at the time that there was a need, and we put it to the people, to differentiate between health and risk of serious harm to one's health. That is what we were trying to achieve.

People are going to ask who will know what serious harm is, and again, if one looks at the legislation, we are not just talking about a random doctor, we are talking about two specialists, an obstetrician, who is someone directly involved in one's pregnancy care and a specialist in that condition which relates to one's health, so if it is a heart problem we are talking about an obstetrician and a cardiologist. As Deputy Bríd Smith said, we are also talking about the woman who finds herself in this situation. Through clinical guidelines doctors will know exactly what this is. These are specialist doctors who in consultation with the woman will be able to make the right decision for the woman. I feel very strongly about the issue of serious harm because regardless of my personal views this was in the draft legislation that was debated extensively during the referendum. People asked us what health means and we provided clarity in relation to it not being the normal risk to one's health that comes with being pregnant.

I need to take a more detailed look on the issue of avert or mitigate.