Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is a degree of confusion with regard to what is proposed in these amendments.

My amendment and some of the others are very much consistent with the constitutional interpretation of Article 40.3.3°. That has already been made clear to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children by Ms Catherine McGuinness. Deputy Róisín Shortall also mentioned the Master of the Rotunda Hospital in terms of the uncertainty that will prevail for medical practitioners without the insertion of some form of amendment. I am quite flexible if the Minister is willing to engage with us to try to find an appropriate wording that would satisfy and deal with the concerns expressed by Dr. Sam Coulter Smith and others.

I want to make the legal point again. It is clear from the interpretation of Mr. Justice Gerard Hogan and Professor Gerry Whyte, two of the foremost constitutional lawyers in the country. They stated:

It cannot be imagined that the ruling in X would permit abortion at any stage in pregnancy no matter how late. Clearly if the foetus is developed to the point where it was or would soon be viable outside the womb, it would be possible to vindicate both the life of the mother and that of the foetus by inducing labour or performing a caesarean section and it is disingenuous to suggest that X permits an abortion at that point.

That is all we are trying to clarify in this legislation. It is not about suggesting one life is superior to the other. It is not about, as has been emotively suggested in the Chamber, somehow restricting the rights of women. Why would I wish to restrict the rights of women or the right to life of Irish women? I am a woman; I am an Irish woman - why would I want to do that? That is not the purpose of the amendment. Its purpose is to ensure we do not create something that will potentially grow out of all control in the future, that does not give clarity to the legal profession and does not make it clear that at a certain point - that point being viability - while one, of course, makes every effort to save the life of the woman, one must also ensure one does not destroy the baby. That is the point. I ask Deputies to try not to misinterpret what I have said and what is written here in black and white.

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