Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I rise today to speak against the main provisions of this Bill which, under the circumstances, must be one of the most misleadingly titled Bills that has ever come before this House. But before I do, I must express my disgust at hearing Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin's contribution in which he lectured the rest of us about betraying the republic because some of us hold a different perception of what the constitutional protection of the unborn means in practice. Neither the Deputy nor his party is in any position to lecture the rest of us about distorting this debate when he himself has stated how he felt it necessary to deceive people about the intentions of the Bill in order to gain time for a more liberal regime. This statement has been recorded, whether covertly or otherwise. I have stated in the House previously that this Bill is deeply coercive and unworkable. It pays lip service to the concept of protecting women's health and the life of the unborn but despite its so-called restrictiveness it will set a precedent the consequences of which I do not believe many in this House are really aware of.

This Bill provides for the first time legislative protection for the direct intentional killing of the unborn child where the risk of suicide is deemed to be of sufficient force that it represents a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother. For all practical purposes, this Bill in its current form is shaped in every conceivable way by the ideological premises which the Labour Party has successfully bullied the Fine Gael to accept. It is not evidence based and it ignores international clinical best practice. It effectively coerces members of the psychiatric profession into a role which they have vocally resisted since the onset of this so-called debate. How any of this helps vulnerable women and their unborn children remains confusing, to say the least.

Although the Government has claimed all along that it has no option but to legislate, this is widely contested. Legal experts have already pointed out that they know of no other area of law where a threat of suicide is sufficient to make legal what would otherwise be illegal. They further note that the notion that a simple threat of suicide would make right something that would otherwise be wrong, is a really dangerous principle. In many ways we are now in a worse situation in terms of clarity because of the inherent contradictions contained within the Bill.

Instead of leaving this issue in the hands of medical professionals who could have been tasked with drawing up more robust guidelines, we now have a Bill that seeks to reconcile the irreconcilable in terms of fusing Fine Gael and Labour policy on this issue. This is a process that has been riven with protracted political wrangling and the exposure of hidden agendas particularly on the Labour side. Indeed, the whole farce that was the Health committee hearings on this Bill is something that I have been pointing out for some time. Time and again we have seen inconsistent and misleading statements being issued from the Chairman of the committee. For example, as I have already pointed out in this House, in his closing statement, the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Health and Children, explicitly stated that the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill as it stood, only provided a framework but not the detail. He stated it was not the final Bill, that it a preliminary document and not the new law. The next morning, less than 12 hours later, during an interview on national radio, the Chairman explicitly stated that provision will be made in the Bill for a woman to obtain an abortion on the grounds of risk of suicide during pregnancy.

This is a deeply conflicting state of affairs and shows the Chairman had already decided to ignore the testimony of those psychiatrists and legal experts who have demonstrated such a provision is contrary to the best medical and legal practice. That was a grievous insult to the good people who came willingly before the committee. Such comments confirmed to those of us who oppose the main thrust of the Bill that this process of so-called investigation had been marked by political expediency from the outset and was never serious in its intention to objectively examine the heads of the Bill. As a member of the committee I sat there and watched in dismay as the shambolic nature of the proceedings continued day after day, week after week . What we cannot say at the end of those hearings is that there has been fair and reasonable debate. That is a great shame, not only for those of us who oppose the Bill but also for the healthy implementation of truly democratic procedures which are valued by us all.

I will deal with the main points of this proposed piece of disastrous legislation. Contrary to what the Government has repeatedly insinuated, the Oireachtas is under no constitutional duty to legislate for abortion on the grounds of threatened suicide as per the X case. There is no such thing as a constitutional duty to legislate for a Supreme Court decision and it is completely wrong to suggest otherwise. In any event, the X case judgment is not a formally binding precedent even from the perspective of the courts, never mind the Oireachtas.

The controversial aspect of the X case - the permissibility of abortion as a treatment for suicidality - was conceded without argument and therefore does not form part of a binding precedent. A basic principle of Irish law is that all points entirely overlooked or conceded without argument are not part of the precedent of a case. Contrary to what the Government has insinuated, the A, B, and C judgment by the European Court of Human Rights does not require Ireland to legislate for abortion on the grounds of threatened suicide. That decision concerned a pregnant cancer patient looking for clarity as to what treatment was lawfully available to her. The rules of the Committee of Ministers require Ireland to adopt measures that are effective for preventing the recurrence of the breach found in the particular case. Applicant C, the only successful applicant, was not suicidal. A suicide-based exemption from the statute law on abortion would not have helped her in any way. The X case heard no psychiatric evidence whatsoever - literally none. The Oireachtas is now in possession of psychiatric evidence completely unheard of by the higher courts 21 years ago. The case is being made that we have done nothing for the past 21 years. There is much more evidence available now than was available at that time. In my view, the Oireachtas is constitutionally free to take on board that evidence and craft its laws accordingly. The evidence unknown to the High and Supreme Court 21 years ago is that abortion is not a treatment for suicidal ideation or intent. This has been accepted by all side. This fact - widely acknowledged even by pro-choice psychiatrists - is the faulty premise upon which both the X case and the current abortion Bill rests. There is simply no psychiatric textbook or peer-reviewed study which purports that abortion is a legitimate treatment for suicidal ideation or intent.

The Bill does not provide for a time limit on the intentional abortion of a child. That is, perhaps, the single most horrifying aspect of the legislation. Despite the Minister's claims to the contrary, the Bill confers no duty on medical professionals to take into account the unborn child's welfare when deciding on an intentional abortion. It makes no provision for the care of a child delivered prematurely as a supposed treatment for suicidal intent. It provides for no legal representative to advocate on behalf of the unborn child that his or her welfare be taken into consideration.

Government spokespeople have argued that the legislation will be restrictive and that there are two high threshold tests to be satisfied before an abortion can be authorised. First, there must be a real and substantial threat to the life of the woman. Second, the risk must be one which can only be averted by an abortion. It is well established that a person is legally free to withhold consent to any and all medical treatment. If a woman refuses all treatment offered to her, it cannot be long before an abortion becomes, almost by default, the only treatment remaining that can save her life. That is the practical reality on a plain reading of the Bill. This shows precisely why mental health grounds are such an elastic legal basis for access to an abortion. Without exception, every jurisdiction which has provided for abortion on mental health grounds has experienced an unintended widening of abortion access. That is widely acknowledged. The fact that on their face Ireland's mental health grounds are narrower than those provided for in other jurisdictions is irrelevant. No matter how narrow or wide the original mental health grounds for abortion have been, every jurisdiction has experienced an unintended widening of the grounds in practice. We need only look overseas at the British Isles to see what happened and consider how the Minister who introduced the relevant legislation feels now. Without exception, every jurisdiction which has provided for abortion on mental health grounds has attempted to enshrine safeguards in its laws. Without exception, these safeguards look safer on the pages of a statute book than they do in a real life clinic.

I am aghast at the speed of the process and the bully boy tactics surrounding the Bill. The Taoiseach promised us time, but I could only be given ten minutes to speak on this fundamental, life-changing Bill. It is a Bill on the killing of the unborn and we are given ten minutes to discuss it. I am part of the Technical Group and do not complain that we had five minutes to participate in the Seanad reform debate. However, we could only be given approximately the same amount of time to speak on a life-changing Bill as on the abolition of the Seanad. It is an insult to democracy and the electorate who put all of us here to provide ten minutes in which to participate in this debate.

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