John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The scope of the tragedy of what happened in Galway is overwhelming and we must reflect on the sad death of a young dentist and near professional colleague of ours. We should learn the lessons of the incident.

I have been quoted and misquoted on the issue, and the misquotes have been flying in recent days. Abortion is very rarely necessary to save a woman's life. It is an extremely rare event, although that does not mean it is not important to have a legislative framework for it. Anybody's life is important but there is another context to this, as maternal deaths in such circumstances are extraordinarily rare events. There are years in Ireland when there are no maternal deaths, with most years seeing only one or maybe two. Most of our large maternity hospitals regard it as a tragedy if there is one such death in the course of a year. It is an extremely rare event. To say that abortion is rarely necessary to save a mother's life does not undermine the necessity for having legislation in place for abortion to save the mother's life at a time when saving that life can only occur in the context of an abortion.

As has been pointed out most recently by my friend and colleague, Senator Mooney, the circumstances of the case are not well known and we are all depending on second-hand accounts from newspapers. I wish no disrespect to any of the accounts given or the unbelievable tragedy suffered by this family when I say we should reserve judgment until there is a formal account of exactly what happened here. There is a suggestion there may have been a failure on the part of the doctors, and that may be the case, but we do not know if that was the cause or if there was a failure of the legislative framework in which the doctors work. The legislative framework is surely inadequate and there has been a vacuum. An inquest will determine the cause of death and we can only hope that will occur very quickly. We must learn lessons from this case as there may well be other cases where similar decisions will be made by doctors, midwives and nurses in the middle of the night.

What is known-----