Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will defend the right of our doctors and nurses to practice their healing vocation with clear consciences and I will defend the right to life of unborn children and their right not to have their lives deliberately ended when they can and should be saved.

As John F. Kennedy stated in a famous speech on conscience delivered shortly before his election as President of the United States, "I will make my decision in accordance with... what my conscience tells me to be the national interest". Most people would not be impressed with a Deputy who voted for something he or she believed to be fundamentally wrong or for a law he or she judged to be unjust, with no scientific basis, and with foreseeable consequences which most people would not wish to see. It is my belief the misnamed Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013 is such a law and this is why I will vote against the Bill on all Stages. As a legislator I am constitutionally free to oppose the Bill and I am conscientiously obliged to do so.

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