Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate. I thank the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, for his approach to date and his well thought-out speeches. I also thank the Citizens' Assembly and the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. However, we are not here because of the Minister's speech or the work of the Citizens' Assembly or joint committee, notwithstanding the excellent work they did. We are here because the Government and previous Governments have been excoriated in the courts as far back as 1992, when Mr. Justice Niall McCarthy in a Supreme Court judgment from which I will quote in due course, criticised the Government on its failure to bring in appropriate legislation almost ten years after the 1983 amendment. We have been excoriated in the European Court of Human Rights and two United Nations committees on human rights. We are here because we have brought shame on ourselves and the eighth amendment has caused appalling suffering to women and loss of life.

I often find myself in agreement with Deputy Ó Cuív and, on occasion, with Deputy Mattie McGrath but the interpretation of the case law by my colleagues on my left who are really on the right beggars belief and leads me to believe that they have not read it. I have read every relevant case that has come before practically every court of the land, the European courts and the UN committees. I think the only court that was left out was the Circuit Court. Women have appeared before the District Court, the High Court, the Supreme Court, the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations committees. They have either gone there themselves after a very traumatic abortion in England or have been brought there by the agencies of the State. I will go through that case law.

I wish to correct a number of inaccuracies. It has been stated that we are rushing legislation through but the opposite is the case. The eighth amendment was made in 1983. The X case was heard in 1992 and it is important to point out that it involved a 14 year old girl who had been subjected to repeated sexual abuse over 18 months, culminating in a rape. That poor girl, who is now an adult, is living with that legacy, as is her family, and must cope with Members continuously talking about the X case. As I stated, during the course of that judgment the Supreme Court excoriated the Government of the time for not bringing in legislation following a gap of almost ten years. One would imagine that a government would learn from that and listen to the well thought-out rationale of the Supreme Court. However, rather than that being so, a series of cases were brought by the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, SPUC, to control information and travel. Indeed, an injunction that restricted my basic right and that of other women in terms of what information we could receive remained in place for four years. There were two more referendums after the 1983 eighth amendment referendum, one of which regarded travel and information and also the exclusion of risk of suicide as grounds for abortion. When the people of Ireland rejected that, those who insisted that life was black and white brought forward another referendum to exclude the risk of suicide as grounds for abortion less than ten years later, which the people refused. In parallel with those developments, appalling cases were coming before the courts I mentioned, with some of which I will deal.

Another piece of misinformation being disseminated is that the death of Savita Halappanavar had nothing to do with abortion and was simply due to a lack of basic care. As a proud Galwegian and one who believes in public medicine, I believe that a fundamental part of the problem was a lack of basic care and, unfortunately, that remains the position as a result of the systematic running down of our public health system and the failure to employ sufficient staff or have enough beds. However, it is absolutely disingenuous to say that was the only cause of the death of Savita Halappanavar. I have read the entire report and recommend that those quoting from it would also do so. It is 108 pages long, including appendices. It states that a key causal factor was the failure to offer all management options to a patient experiencing "inevitable miscarriage of an early second trimester pregnancy including where there is prolonged rupture of membranes and where the risk to the mother increases with time from the time that membranes were ruptured". In case that is insufficiently clear, the investigation team states it is satisfied that concerns about the law, whether clear or not, impacted on the exercise of clinical professional judgment. If we are to quote, let us do so comprehensively.

The notion that we will have the most liberal abortion laws if we go down this road is also totally inaccurate. I ask Members to read the turascáil from the comhchoiste. I also ask them to read the Bill digest where they will see all of the figures. In terms of opening the floodgates, that has never happened. I like to be precise. A very small number of abortions were carried out following the 2013 Act. In 2014 the total figure was 26, of which the total due to the risk from suicide was three. In 2015 it was 26 with the total due to the risk from suicide also being three. In 2016 the total was 25, with the total due to the risk from suicide being one. In addition, we have the number of women going abroad. No floodgates were opened in Ireland as a result of the 2013 legislation.

It was mentioned already by Deputy Paul Murphy that Sheila Hodgers died yesterday, 19 March, 35 years ago. It is significant that she died in March, which was six months before the eighth amendment became law. She died at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda after giving birth to a premature baby who died almost immediately. The hospital had refused to allow her to stay on treatment because it would harm her unborn child. That was prior to the eighth amendment. She was denied an X-ray and pain relief. That was Ireland in March 1983. Her husband asked at various stages for an abortion, early delivery of the baby or a caesarean section and all were refused. That inhuman medical treatment occurred just six months before the people of Ireland voted in the eighth amendment. It was quite clear when they voted for it that the pain, anguish and death of Sheila Hodgers had not led to any period of meaningful reflection or learning on the part of society, rather, the cold ambition of preventing abortion was to be at any cost to the life and health of women and it was also in complete denial of the reality of the thousands of pregnant women who travel out of the country each year, including in 1983. We have the figures in that regard.

Year after year following that, women came before every court in the land, in Europe and before the United Nations committees. The movement was to give certainty in an area where certainty cannot apply. We know that from all of the cases I will outline in detail. However, we knew that at the time as well. Peter Sutherland, the then Attorney General appealed for it not to be done. Unusually, the then Taoiseach, Garrett FitzGerald, took the step of publishing the advice. In 1983 he said:

Far from providing the protection and certainty which is sought by many of those who have advocated its adoption, it will have a contrary effect. In particular it is not clear as to what life is being protected; [We know of course now that the life of the mother certainly was not being protected] as to whether 'the unborn' is protected from the moment of fertilisation or alternatively is left unprotected until [...] Further, having regard to the equal rights of the unborn and the mother, a doctor faced with the dilemma of saving the life of the mother, knowing that to do so will terminate the life of 'the unborn' will be compelled by the wording to conclude that he can do nothing.

We know that is exactly what happened as case after case came before the courts. I respect the opinions of those to my left who have spoken but I ask them to inform themselves about the facts. If they believe that this is not what happened I refer them to a number of very recent judgments. I refer to a case dating 3 December 2014. The family in question did not have a very good Christmas that year. On that date a 26 year old mother of two children who was pregnant with her third child, who had previously been admitted to hospital, was diagnosed as being brain-stem dead but because she was pregnant she was kept alive. The father of the woman, in agreement with her partner, was forced to take a High Court action, which finally led to a judgment on 26 December, St. Stephen's Day 2014. What is noteworthy in regard to the eighth amendment are the notes of the doctor in 2014 which said that they were not to do anything that would get them into trouble from a legal point of view, and that they were awaiting legal advice. That was the High Court in 2014 which finally agreed with the father that the woman should be allowed to die with some measure of dignity.

The lead-up to the case can only be described as grotesque. A woman who was dead was kept alive. Make-up was applied to her to make her look okay when her children visited her, all because of the eighth amendment. There is no doubt about that in my mind, but what is in my mind is not important, what is important is the evidence that came out in the case before the High Court that the eighth amendment led to the doctor not doing anything and so that woman was kept alive in 2014, in the second decade of the 21 century. It is quite clear that the tentacles of the eighth amendment have stretched into areas never foreseen, such as keeping a dead woman alive.

Another case in 2016, a little over a year ago, concerned a woman who had three caesarean sections and wanted to go as far as she could in her fourth pregnancy. She knew in the end she would probably have to have a caesarean section but the doctor took a view that she was endangering the foetus and that he had a duty to act under the eighth amendment. A High Court action was taken to force her to have a caesarean section. Fortunately, the judge decided it was a step too far to order the forced caesarean section to be carried out on a woman against her will, even though not making the order increased the risk of injury and death to both Mrs. B and her unborn child. The High Court judge went on to give the woman a lecture on the decision she was making. He said she was making a bad decision, one he would not make, but he considered it a step too far to interfere. Since then, Justine McCarthy did us all a favour by publishing the story on the front of The Sunday Times. We saw a lovely young woman who gave the human side to the High Court case where she was taken to task by the judge. She said she simply wanted to go as far as she could with the natural process and that was her only reason. She said she would make her mind up in the end.

We are asked not to be emotional but as a woman it is difficult not to be emotional when I read all of those cases and I listen to a debate where some of the speakers talk about protecting women's lives and say that of course treatment is given. No, treatment is not given. It was not given in the case of Savita. I have mentioned the High Court action concerning the dead woman and the case concerning the caesarean section. That leads me to the area of fatal foetal abnormality and the untold distress and upset that has been caused. In one case a woman had twins, one of whom was dead and the other was going to die, yet she was forced to go the whole way to the European court. On that occasion, unfortunately, the court agreed with the Government's argument that she should have exhausted every remedy at home. It was said there was an arguable case that perhaps the courts would have given her permission to have an abortion. Can one imagine that woman, pregnant with twins, one of them dead and the other with a fatal foetal abnormality that was going to die yet the Government argued, very recently, that she should exhaust every remedy right up to the Supreme Court and that she should only then go to the European Court of Justice? That is the nature of the law we have here.

I refer to the special cases, the cases that should have led to reflection and forced politicians to do something about it. They are the cases that should have led every man and woman in this Dáil to say, "Oh, good Lord". We are hearing one thing from the church about human life being sacred, but this is the reality on the ground. We had the X case involving a girl who was 14, followed in 2006 by another case with a letter from the alphabet, only this time the girl was a year younger, again the subject of a rape in the care of the health board who wanted to go abroad to have a termination. The health board was helping her to go but the parents took an injunction in the District Court to stop her.

The A, B and C v. Ireland case was before the European Court of Human Rights. The C case involved a woman with cancer. We then had the Mellet and Whelan cases in 2016 and 2017 in regard to fatal foetal abnormality. How many more cases do such courageous women or their families need to bring before we reflect and use a different type of language here?

In terms of the figures for those who are leaving on a daily basis, and we should be precise and use the figures from the Bills digest, between 2010 and 2015, some 5,650 women used abortion pills. Every year in each county, 3,265 women leave to go abroad for an abortion. Will we ignore all of those women or will we look at their profile? Their profile is not what we imagine. It is largely women between the ages of 20 and 40, and 69% of the abortions took place before nine weeks gestation. Some 49% of the women were married or in a civil partnership. That is the profile of the 3,265 people who leave our shores every year but we want to ignore that and pretend it does not exist. As a woman, I certainly cannot pretend that it does not exist.

I will reluctantly talk about my personal circumstances. I come from a family of 14, equally balanced, seven and seven. I am someone who suffered the loss of a mother at a young age. I bring that into the debate not on an emotional level, but to say that we are not pro-life is insulting. It is worse than insulting. It is dangerous because it seeks to polarise a debate that should not be polarised. It is preventing a debate based on evidence and facts, and it is allowing a myth to continue that the eighth amendment saves lives when it has actively caused the death of women and others to suffer seriously. It has also seriously disabled and disempowered them. I ask that we read the cases, read the Bills digest and come back in here to make a conscientious decision, which I respect, but based on evidence and what is happening on the ground.

In terms of criminalising abortion and having a 14 year penalty in the 21st century, words fail me. The fact that it has never been implemented is very worrying in a sense because the purpose clearly is to terrorise, isolate and demonise.

I welcome the Minister's approach to date. I am sure I will disagree with him on many other issues, and certainly on the state of the health service nationally and also in Galway city, but I thank him for his approach to this matter.

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