Ms Marie O'Shea:

Section 9 provides for the risk of serious harm to the woman in particular. Medicine is not a precise science, it involves very skilled and educated guesses. When one talks to the perinatal psychiatrists, one finds that they have a fear that they may be damned if they do and they may be damned if they do not. They say that it is not always clear whether a termination of pregnancy will avert the risk. They would seek legislative change to protect them by including that at the time they make it the reasonable opinion is formed in good faith, and that it will be on the facts known to them at that point in time and not something that subsequently arose thereafter. That is another thing that could be done quite quickly.