Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I know orphans who were the product of a conception through rape. They certainly do not want to think that their lives might have been snuffed out. I know a couple of them. It is shocking that women have had the experience and consequential emotional effects travelling through their lives and to their husbands, partners and children. We cannot repeat this enough. We must understand it. It is not a quadratic equation or legal treatise that we have to undertake. We must look after women and babies from the moment of conception and the whole human family on the island until natural death. Otherwise, we may begin to look at people who have lost their minds and memories as being at the other end of the spectrum from what some people call a foetus rather than a baby - an old bag of bones or whatever remote medical term might be used. No. Everybody is worthy and life is a gift. I did not decide to be born in August 1951 and my children did not decide to come into the world. I will leave it at that as some thoughts on which to reflect.

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