Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I understand that in 1949 the view was that lactation had an effect on the mind of mothers who were breastfeeding. Medical and psychiatric science have moved on from that. Issues such as post-puerperal depression and the like would not necessarily be linked to lactation in the technical sense and it is for that reason I put forward these amendments.

The Deputy will appreciate that the issue of "mental disorder" arises later in a separate grouping of amendments before the House. It would be better therefore to confine my remarks at this stage to what I have said. I am trying to remove what is an out of date and medically unsupportable proposition from the Infanticide Act and to modernise the language used in that Act to deal adequately with the phenomenon of mothers who shortly after birth, unfortunately, injure their child in circumstances where if it was a stranger it would amount to murder.

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