Professor Fergal Malone:

Absolutely because on a reading of the guideline, as the Senator quoted correctly, the clinical signs are present, but the point is there can be an infection much earlier. We will take that risk if the patient is at 23, 24 or 25 weeks, on the cusp of viability and we might just get there. Let us take that risk together. When the patient is at 14 or 15 weeks and has another ten weeks before there is even a chance of viability, the balance is very hard to justify. It does restrict us.

The Senator expresses surprise that some families who have carried a baby with fatal abnormalities and have had those special moments after birth would have a hard time reconciling with the idea of a termination for fatal foetal abnormalities. I agree completely with him and absolutely accept that there are some parents who follow that journey who would find what we are talking about appalling and could never conceive of the idea of terminating their pregnancies, but equally there are many patients who when they are told at 12 or 14 weeks that, unfortunately, their baby has no head and no upper brain, that there is nothing we can do about it, that they must wait another four, five or six months before we can, find it equally appalling. I am here to tell the committee that we would like to care for all of our patients, irrespective of what is their personal, moral, religious or ethical background. One group of patients has a care pathway that it can follow, but another does not.