David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is an extremely important debate and what has happened here today in this House illustrates that. It is remarkable that every woman who spoke here took a charitable and understanding view of the complex issues. However, not all of the men did so. It was very courageous of Senator Power to put her personal story, with all its complexity, before the House and to illustrate that Fianna Fáil, as a party, has refused to be railroaded for political gain into one particular corner on this debate. I welcome the fact this was demonstrated here today.

I welcome the excellent contribution of Senators Clune and Hayden, but the most important contribution so far was that of Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell. I urge the Minister to take what she said back to Government, because it is clear there is the capacity to legislate in the area of foetal abnormality. As a mere man, I hope it does. It is barbarous to sentence women who are the victims of rape, incest or whose foetuses have a severe foetal abnormality - a child that would be born without a brain - to bearing those foetuses to full term. We should let it sink in what foetal abnormality means. It means a child without a developed head. We presume to take to ourselves the power to force women to bear these incomplete foetuses to term in order to satisfy some religious scruple of our own. It would be difficult to meet that extraordinary arrogance elsewhere and the majority of people wish that arrogance did not exist.

A Senator I will not name, as he is not here at the moment, challenged the ability of the Supreme Court, but I am glad to say I managed to get the record corrected on that. He went on to impugn the Ryan report. He also impugned the voice of the Irish people as expressed in two referenda and in doing that he also impugned the intelligence of the Irish people by saying they were so stupid they did not actually know what they were doing.

The pro-life movement uses the words "unborn" and "unmedical". I am very glad the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, has taken the same position I have had for a number of years, of challenging those who take over the language system, because once one has the language system under one's control, one has won the argument. We must resist the stress on words such as "unborn", "pro-family", "pro-life", "unmedical", etc.

We must use our intelligence. We were told here earlier that the fact that no doctor has been convicted means there is no chilling effect. Oh really? What it means is that the doctors were so confused by the grey area or so threatened by it that they did not take the action they knew was medically required. If anyone doubts that they should have watched, with me, most of the prominent gynaecologists in this country, including the masters of the two largest maternity hospitals, saying that it had a chilling effect. We must listen to them.

I believe in listening to the other side and for that reason attended the briefing in the audio-visual room. The main point left out by a previous speaker, when talking about tender loving care in the context of suicide and so forth, was that they also use drugs to sedate people. While I was there, for quite a considerable amount of the time, there were 40 men and only three women in the room and that suggests a certain lack of balance. The idea of suicide was challenged but I do not care, to be quite honest. In my opinion, suicide is a valid consideration, whether it is real or not. If a woman was raped or was pregnant as a result of incest, she would be terrified that she would not be allowed the appropriate medical treatment and in those circumstances, I think it is legitimate for her to say, "I am so upset that I am thinking of taking my own life." Who is to challenge that? We should be honest in addressing these issues.

I am glad something is to be done on the 1861 Act - 1861 is a long time ago - and I am familiar with it because I challenged it in the European Court of Human Rights. I lost in the two courts here but I won in Europe and I am glad we are looking at this aspect of the legislation again. I have said for the last 25 years that, sooner or later, however difficult and however awful a situation it may appear to people, we have to face the question of abortion. I found it very interesting that the Minister spoke about "lawful abortion in Ireland". That is a phrase that would have been unthinkable ten, 15 or 20 years ago.

I remember, about ten years ago, reading and being moved to tears by a letter in The Irish Timesby a woman who had an anencephalic child - sorry an anencephalic pregnancy. It was a foetus, it was not a child. How could one say it was a child? I do not see how one could say it was a child. It had no brain, no spinal cord, no nervous system, no capacity to feel or sense. How is this human? How is this fully human? I do not understand it. It is a misuse of language. She was forced to continue that pregnancy and with great courage, she wrote and signed that letter and included her address.

Senator Power read an e-mail and I would like to read part of another. This e-mail contains grammatical errors and was not sent by some mad, liberal campaigner from Dublin 4. She was pregnant but her baby had Meckel-Gruber Syndrome. Such babies survive inside the mother because the umbilical cord continues feeding them but they will "100%" die during or after birth. She wrote that such babies "are severely deformed, where the back of the head doesn't form and the brain grows on the outside, no fluid around them and almost always have organ failure". She continues, "I went full term and had to have the baby because it was five months when we found out about the problem - too late to terminate". She then had a few more pregnancies but:

...with the fourth pregnancy we found out it had happened again and had to find out about a termination all on our own as the doctors wouldn't even talk or give advice to us on this subject. It was so taboo that they would not say anything to us that might cost them their jobs. We ended up going over to an appalling clinic where we were treated like dogs and pushed out the door, 15 minutes after the termination. There were do-gooders outside throwing holy water on us and praying for us. So drowsy and sore. We then had to go to the airport for our flight back home and all in all it cost us ¤2,000.

I am deeply ashamed that that happened to that woman and I do not care what the consequences are ---