Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Damien English.

In addressing this pivotal, painful and deeply divisive matter, it is important that we recognise that it is, above all, a faith-based issue. By this, I do not mean it is an issue based in any one of the many religious codes now represented in this country but that it requires us to have faith, do the best we can in legislation and fulfil our duty as lawmakers. Our duty is not a controlling, punitive one, nor is it about controlling the behaviour of the citizens who elected us as it is not for us to assume they are malicious or manipulative. When I was a principal of primary school I never saw the children as they arrived at the school every September as potential lawbreakers or future evildoers. On the contrary, I saw them as individuals, each of whom was unique and packed with promise. I never considered it my duty to lay down rules to prevent from occurring the totality of awful things in which a small minority of them could engage. Anyone who spends time with children knows that where there are toddlers or teenagers, they will come up with things to do that no adult brain could ever anticipate.

One sets down the minimum rules and one has faith. One has faith that they will, like the rest of us, want to be happy, want to have friends and want to achieve something. One has faith that they will learn and show compassion. One has faith because without faith, there is no hope and without hope, life is not worth living.

The Bill requires us to be rigorous in our argument and thinking but it also quite properly requires us to have faith, first of all in women. The language of suspicion that surrounds suicidal ideation in pregnant women is doing a disservice to the women of the State. At best it shames vulnerable women and at worst it demonises them. The language of suspicion holds that if a woman is in a crisis pregnancy and can terminate that pregnancy by claiming to be suicidal, she will make precisely those claims. This is to caricature women and reduce them to one manipulative stereotype. It is unrealistic, nasty and inhuman. The reality is that many thousands of women find themselves in crisis pregnancies every year. We have some figures for those who find their way to British cities. We have no figures for the thousands who stay in Ireland, give birth and cope with the often very difficult consequences. I have seen no useful figures for the women who take their own lives and those of their unborn children because they can see no other way out. However, none of us can have any doubt that it has happened, does happen and will happen. That is what the Bill is about.

Every pregnancy - crisis or desired - is unique, just as every pregnant woman is unique. The suggestion that women en massewould deal with crisis pregnancies by presenting to the medical profession and claiming to be suicidal disrespects every woman who has had such a pregnancy and who may have one in the future. That disrespect happens when we deal with this issue in the abstract. Because it is abstract, it is possible to be absolute. Absolutes are difficult to apply when the issue is not abstract. When it is a real human being in perhaps terminal distress, when it is a woman we know, care about or gave birth to, then the absolutes fall away as to arguments such as the floodgates argument. When we know and respect the woman who has a crisis pregnancy, we cannot bring ourselves to see her as faking determination to die in order to get a termination. Nor can we see her as part of a horde of other manipulative women in the same situation. When we know her and love her, we have faith in her. We must have faith in the tiny minority of women who, in crisis pregnancy, resolve to take their own lives rather than carry the pregnancy to full term. They are entitled to be heard, treated and taken care of when their lives are at substantial risk.

We must also have faith in the medical professionals who will deal with this tiny minority of suicidal pregnant women. They are professionals who chose to enter a caring profession and are scientists. Dr. Tony Holohan, chief medical officer in the Department of Health, told us that psychiatry is a clinical science and one that is based on scientific method and endeavour. It is not a hocus-pocus assessment. There is a genuine clinical method and evaluation. The simple assertion that there is uncertainty in that clinical evaluation in no way negates the science behind this practice of psychiatry. Doctors caring for women seek at all time to assure her health and the health of her baby. When a woman walks into a hospital before she reaches 40 weeks of gestation, the doctor will do anything and everything to treat whatever symptoms the woman may be showing to ensure the gestation period can be prolonged.

The health of the woman and her child is always of the utmost importance. Why then would we assume that a pregnant woman presenting with suicidal intent would not be treated in exactly the same way and with the same seriousness? Why does suicidal ideation or intent not have a place alongside the serious symptoms that threaten the lives of both mother and child? No doctor faced with a pregnant woman who has an extreme obesity condition complicated by diabetes could predict the outcome for the mother or her child. Medicine is not black and white, it is messy and it carries no guarantees. It is uncertain, it is about addressing risks and deciding on the best available medical practice and then treating the symptoms and the illness. Under this legislation a pregnant woman who presents with suicidal ideation would be offered medical and psychiatric help. That is only right. No doctor or psychiatrist can definitely confirm that the patient will or will not kill herself. All they can do is deal with risk in good conscience. They are mandated to care for two lives.

Many times it has been stated that termination of pregnancy will not treat or solve suicide. That much has been said in the House by one psychiatrist after another and that for me is an indication that a psychiatrist treating a suicidal pregnant woman will automatically seek to treat her using methods which have a track record in treating and solving suicide rather than using methods which do not treat or solve suicide. They will work to save both lives. We can have faith in that. Further, I believe that if we respect psychiatrists and obstetricians then we must have faith in them. Having listened to so many of them - it is clear not all of them agree with each other on aspects of the legislation - I do not believe that suicidal intent, though rarer than symptoms such as infection, haemorrhaging or high blood pressure, would not be treated with the same quality of care used to treat any other symptom. I remind the House that the provisions of the Bill ensure that no single psychiatrist will ever make a decision to terminate a pregnancy on his or her own. That will not and cannot ever happen.

Throughout my contribution I have emphasised the importance of our duty to remember our limitations as legislators and to demonstrate our faith in the professionals who will implement the provisions of this law when it is passed. In that context I wish to address the suggestion that legal representation should be brought in to argue for the rights of the unborn foetus in the case of suicidal intent on the part of the mother. The central problem implicit in such a suggestion lies in the lack of faith in the medical consultants involved. If consultants are mandated to protect both lives, as is the case in the Bill, then bringing a lawyer into the room implies that they cannot be trusted to protect the unborn life without legal intervention.

The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill is about the sanctity of two lives. It is about legislators doing their duty and relying on other professions to do their duty as well. It is about checks and balances and appeal procedures. Above all, it is an opportunity for Members of Dáil Éireann to move away from frightening absolute allegations about manipulative women lying about their desperation and instead demonstrating our faith in the citizens who elected us.

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