Ms Liz McDermott:

I will respond to the question on my pro-life convictions, or otherwise. Like most people, I never thought about abortion very much because I did not need to think about it. I did not like the idea of it but I was certainly not in any way actively involved in pro-life politics or campaigning. When I had John and was confronted by abortion as a real option, I realised that I felt very strongly that babies are not choices for anybody else to make. Babies are separate human beings to whom we owe duties and responsibilities. We have, not rights over them, but rather duties towards them. At the time I reacted instinctively as a mother to want to protect my baby, who seemed more vulnerable than other children and perhaps more in need of mothering. That is why I was upset when he was unexpectedly taken away from me after birth. No care plan had been put in place for me that was sensitive to my needs and my desire to bond with my child. I would say then that my conviction that abortion is neither a solution nor a good path to follow stems from my experience of having gone through that journey.

The Senator asked if compassion should be shown to women who make another choice. I do not see babies as choices for us to make once they exist and once they are living and growing inside us. The choice over whether they are there or not and whether they live or not is not for us to make. We have to fall back on the question of what are human rights and who is entitled to them. We did not know much about life in the womb back when abortion was legalised in the United Kingdom, our nearest neighbours. We know much more now about the action and development in the womb in the very early stages, right down to the first 24 hours after conception. Science is catching up with the pro-life conviction when it now says that the human life starts at the beginning and is on a continuum. Does it have the right to life or does it not? I do not see that it is up to us to legislate for and qualify that. I do not have the authority to do this and nor does anybody else. We have human rights because we are human. That is it and that, as far as I am concerned, is the qualifier.

I do not like the fact that women feel they have to make that choice. I would love to see a more compassionate system in place that says to them, "We value you and your baby too much. We love you too much to do that and we love your baby too much to do that, and we want to support you."