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

It is on lines 12 and 13 of page 6. That was what I always understood it to be. It was traditionally the practice of good medicine in Ireland, and anyone who says anything to the contrary does not know what really good medical practice was about. This goes to the core of the dilemma facing medical practitioners, midwives, nurses and doctors. Are there two patients or one? As I have said from the very beginning, there are people here who believe that there is only one patient and the other human life does not count. Some people believe it counts in some way but not really. One of the Deputies here this afternoon - I admire her honest and her integrity on this - referred to the "main patient". Others believe that in human existence that is a very slippery slope to start down. When one starts differentiating between people and talking about main patients and not-so-main patients we know where that kind of thinking leads.

The Bill provides that a doctor must refer a case on. Many medical people, particularly the doctors who are tasked with referring on, know from medical science that there are two human beings. Referring on the so-called care of one of these human beings is to refer the other to certain destruction. If one does not believe there are two human beings, that is not a dilemma. If one believes that one totally has control over the right of the other and that the other has no right - in other words, the unborn has no right - that poses no problem. Most of these cases concern people who do not have any medical conditions that require a treatment of that kind, because the whole Bill provides for abortion for no reason. We know the vast majority of abortions are carried out-----

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