Professor Veronica O'Keane:

I understand that, but I have to make the point that the constitutional ban in place creates stigma for people who are practising medicine as well. I believe my colleagues are terrified. They are terrified of the narrow rigid legal framework that they are being told they have to practise within or else what they do will be a criminal offence. We all know the maximum sentence is 14 years. That is the position for doctors. That restricts medical practice. There is the chilling effect that everyone refers to.

The discrimination and stigma facing the women is deeply regrettable and hurtful and it creates unnecessary suffering. Suffering is inherent in life. I work in a profession where people develop psychotic illness in their late teenage years and their lives are changed. The whole trajectory of the family life is changed as well, and that is a tragedy. What we want to do is, as Hippocrates said, prevent unnecessary suffering. Yet, we are creating unnecessary suffering in trying to work within the system that we are working within at the moment. It is creating unnecessary suffering in women.

Women are sitting in airports feeling the shame. I believe we all feel the shame, as I said in my opening statement. I think it is shameful too. One thing will always remain with me. I recall when I walked through an outpatient clinic. RTE Radio was reporting there on the tribunal into the care that Savita Halappanavar had received in University Hospital Galway. I was absolutely shocked and terribly distressed to hear the RTE presenter talking about intimate gynaecological details in a room full of patients. There were so many levels to it. On one level I was the doctor and the patients knew I was the doctor. At that level there was violation of the sacred trust between doctor and patient. It was violation of the most intimate of intimate things that many women would not share with a best friend, mother or sister. Yet it was there being broadcast. We were listening to all of that – I think that is shameful.

We need to move it from a legal constitutional framework into a medical clinic, which is where it belongs. Stigma is a really important mental health issue and is central in the whole problem that this committee is trying to resolve. I wish the committee members all the very best in their work.