Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I find it incredibly difficult to speak about this subject. It is important when speaking about it not to hurt or offend anybody, and I will try to speak in a way that does not do that. I have been an elected representative for a long time. One thing I have always tried to do is not judge anybody on anything they have done. All of us have experience of people coming to our constituency clinics who are condemned by the world for their actions. I have always tried, and I do not claim to have always succeeded, to leave judgment outside the door and try to assist another human being.

I hope that nobody would engage in the innuendo that people are taking a stand on this issue to get votes. I do a great deal of work for Travellers and I guarantee that it is not a great vote getter. I have tried to assist all the disability groups over my years in politics. As some people know, I have done a great deal for prisoners, not only those in prison due to the Troubles, but also to help the families of people in prison who have been convicted of other crimes. I have been criticised for doing so. I do not mind. It is not popular. However, I believe no human being on the earth is beyond consideration and assistance irrespective of what they have done in the past. In anything I say, therefore, I am not making a judgment on anybody. Regardless of the circumstances in which a person comes to me, I respect the person's confidentiality and make no judgment. There is a saying in Irish, Níl a fhios ag aon duine cá luíonn an bhróg ar an duine eile, which means one never knows where the shoe is laid. Time and again that saying has struck me in my career.

There is one thing on which there is probably general agreement across the House, and it is something I could never understand when the then Minister, Senator Reilly, introduced the Protection of Human Life During Pregnancy Bill, and that is the outrageous possible penalties in that legislation. I accept it is unlikely they would ever be imposed on a woman, but the fact that those outrageous penalties were in the law was wrong.

No constitutional change is needed to amend that Act and put an end to the possibility of a woman who procures an abortion receiving a sentence of 14 years' imprisonment. Such a possibility is both an abomination and totally wrong. I agree that severe penalties are required for those who provide illegal abortions because such procedures put women's lives and health at risk.

On this issue, like in all debates, each side could conclude it is right. Those on the pro-life side would say that the eighth amendment has saved a considerable number of lives. The nub of the issue is whether we accept that an unborn child is a human being. As a public representative, I have been grappling with that over the past 20 years or so. If we do not accept it, the issue should be resolved in favour of the pro-choice side. However, if we do accept it, we must consider the principle, which is very dear to me, as a public representative, of not countenancing the taking of any life as legal. That is the nub of the issue and for people to dismiss it is unfair. My knowledge and reason tells me that a 20-week-old baby in the womb, although being nurtured by its mother, is an independent human being. The day of the elimination of the law permitting capital punishment was one of the best in my time in politics. When I was first elected to Dáil Éireann, there was a law under which a person could be executed for killing a garda. We have moved on and the Constitution now prohibits the death penalty. I have never agreed that the State should have the right to take a life in those circumstances, although some argued that such people had done terrible things. The dilemma is that if I believe and know and all scientific evidence indicates that an unborn child is a human being, why is no consideration being given to the position of such a child? As Maolra Seoighe said from the gallows, "Tá mé chomh neamhchiontach leis an leanbh sa mbroinn"; "I am as innocent as a child in the womb." The Members present in the House would find it difficult to believe that in an unborn state they were not themselves.

I know children and I have grandchildren. It is amazing that children often display character traits which they carry with them throughout their lives on the day they are born. I hope that, at least, those in favour of repeal and abortion understand our problem and dilemma and that we are not hard-hearted. Like all Members present, I wish there was an easy answer to this issue. I wish we were not in a situation whereby the burden and challenge of this problem seem to weigh more heavily on one sex than the other, although I do not accept that men do not have a role to play. In some cases, men, for their own selfish interests and possibly because of embarrassment, have persuaded women to get abortions. Therefore, to leave men out of this is to take from them a responsibility that is rightly theirs because it takes two to bring a child into the world.

I am hugely concerned by deaths in our maternal hospitals. There were three reports on the Savita Halappanavar case and they concluded that her death was due to mistreatment of sepsis that should earlier have been diagnosed. A case recently came to public notice involving a woman who died during an operation on an ectopic pregnancy, which is a very common operation that has been performed in our hospitals for generations. That case deserves as much examination, questioning and remedying as any other in terms of how that was allowed to happen. The outrage of anybody dying in our hospitals in a way that could have been avoided is inexcusable and must be dealt with.

I hope this debate will lead to our being willing to put far more money into two issues: disability, which can arise after or before one is born, and maternity hospitals, such that they can provide the best care in the world and keep up with improving standards. All Members know of children with life-limiting conditions. Some have children close to them with that diagnosis. Because of modern medicine, parents may be given devastating news before a child is born about many things that might not be life-limiting in terms of the duration of the child's life but would be permanently life-constraining. It must be horrendous to be given such a diagnosis. In its wisdom, the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution recommended that such diagnoses not be grounds for abortion. To say it is not absolutely devastating news is not to face reality. We should put far more care, money and support into assisting such parents. The issues of perinatal hospice care and disability must be addressed. Every day, many people face the challenges of looking after parents or children with a disability and fighting with the State for very fundamental things.

By its nature, a referendum is a binary choice. In this case, the choice will be whether to leave in place Article 40.3.3°, which protects human life. I have never had any problem with any medical intervention undertaken in good faith to save a mother's life. I have always believed that anybody who holds back in that regard is wrong. Alternatively, should we take away the constitutional protection afforded by Article 40.3.3° and leave such decisions to the Oireachtas?

What the Oireachtas might do then will be a matter for the Oireachtas and it will not be confined to the proposals of the committee. All the referendum will say, if it succeeds, is that it is then up to these Houses.

I believe that in reality, if we go down the route of life limiting conditions, doctors will find it very hard to make that judgment. Many of the arguments put forward in favour of the referendum will not be dealt with by the proposals in the committee's report. There is much talk of the fact that 3,000 to 3,500 women go to Britain each year. Looking at the statistics, I believe that the numbers of women who travel to Britain for the reasons of fatal foetal abnormality or a life limiting condition are a tiny fraction of the overall numbers who travel. The women who travel there because the baby has been diagnosed with a serious disability are relatively small. I believe that the vast majority go because they want an abortion for social and other reasons. This means that there are people rationalising about where this journey is going. These people know that we are on a journey. There are Members of the Dáil or organisations such as Repealeight who want abortion totally on the same terms as Britain de facto- not de jure - and they say that nothing else is going to stop the flow. The argument that a proposed referendum will stop the flow does not stand up. Unfortunately, the way we are going about this means that inexorably this will happen. The report shows us this. When we see what some committee members are proposing we see the direction they want to bring us. They will have an in. Once it is decided that the child in the womb is not a child or a human to be protected there is an inescapable logic and rationale to where it is going, because who are we to make the choice and to limit the decision between one child and another?

I believe that any talk about proposed legislation is not what we are actually asking the people. We are asking the people if they want to leave it open to what I consider to be an inevitable journey and to equalise our law with Britain or any other liberal country, or we are asking the people if they want to stay where we are and see how we can provide better services and protect that fundamental human right. It is not easy and there is no perfect answer. I do not pretend to have a perfect answer. We live in a very imperfect world with great sorrow, great sadness and difficulty in it. I hear people talk about moral superiority of the current generation over the past generations. I sometimes wonder when I hear societal attitudes to some of the problems of the people I deal with. People 50 years ago had the same superior view of the structure of their society. They thought they had cracked the past and that people who lived 50 years before them had been totally out of fashion. I can guarantee the House one thing: in 50 years' time people will wonder how could we have left so much wrong in the 2010-30 period. They will wonder how we could have been so cruel to so many people. Day in and day out I feel we are living in a very uncaring State. I could tell stories but it would break confidences I have with people. People are being treated in an utterly harrowing way by the State at this time.

Because I believe the unborn child is just that - an unborn child who is fully a human being - this referendum will be the first time ever that a referendum will be introduced to take a fundamental human right to life away from so many. If one does not accept that the child is a human then that is fair enough, but if one does accept it then we have a massive dilemma. I will come down on the side of protecting human life.

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