Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 10:

In page 6, between lines 2 and 3, to insert the following:

““fatal foetal abnormality” means a medical condition suffered by a foetus such that it is incompatible with life outside the womb;”.

Some of us felt there should be a space to stretch this legislation to deal with the issue of incompatibility with life, and to deal in a more compassionate and immediate way with the very tragic circumstances that very many women find themselves in, where they are pregnant but there will not be a baby at the end of the pregnancy because the baby has a fatal foetal abnormality.

I said earlier that I had visited Liverpool National Health Trust Hospital last week, specifically in regard to this issue. One of the things the consultant obstetrician to whom I and others spoke said was that the hospital was concerned in regard to the care of the women they see when there is the absence of a complete medical history. The follow-up care that would normally be available is very often not available because people obviously have to travel outside of the country, which is a costly exercise, they are often detached from their family and there are sometimes other children and other considerations. Therefore, they do not get the follow-up care in that hospital that the hospital would wish to give them, including care like genetic screening.

I said earlier that the one thing the staff did say that was different about Irish women as opposed to the other women they see, who are mostly from the UK, was that the Irish women expected that staff would be judgmental. It is really quite tragic that this is the feeling they should have.

We had a young man with us whose wife in late 2011 had a termination in those circumstances in that hospital. He went back there and particularly wanted to thank the staff in the hospital for their compassion, their care and their attention to her.

He could not speak more highly about them. He talked about how they had to come back on Christmas week with people who were coming home for Christmas. Arrangements had to be made before they left about how the ashes were to be delivered. Three weeks later, luckily he happened to be in the house the morning DHL arrived. A man arrived at the door with a big smile on his face, thinking he was delivering a package that someone had ordered online but it was the ashes of the baby they wanted. That is the kind of circumstance people must deal with.

See this speech in context