Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Many Members have referred to the referendum in 1983 and the X case in 1992 and the European Court of Human Rights judgment. That is what has brought us to this point. Obviously, there is disagreement on the issue but there are also areas of agreement. Certainly, where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother, pro-choice and pro-life people agree that the mother should be entitled to every medical treatment and intervention without inhibition in order to save her life. This applies even in circumstances in which it is known that by treating the mother and giving her necessary treatment it would lead to the loss of life of her baby.

An ethical and moral distinction needs to be made. There is a difference between offering the mother every available treatment, on one the hand, as a consequence of which the baby dies, and, on the other, adopting a position from the start where the life of the unborn baby is targeted. This distinction needs to be recognised.

The House debated the issue of embryonic stem cell research a number of years ago. In preparation for that debate I read an article by Professor William Reville, associate professor of bio-ethics in UCC. He comes from New Ross. He was a very bright student and a number of classes ahead of me in school. He wrote about the continuum of life, that life began at conception and ended at natural death. He argued that if that life was interrupted at any point along the continuum, whether it be in middle age, childhood or in the unborn state, the effect was the same. He said this was an arbitrary decision for anyone to take. I can circulate his article to those who may be interested in reading it.

I will not challenge the decision made in the X case, but it must be recognised that no expert psychiatric medical advice was tendered during the High Court case or in the subsequent Supreme Court hearing. To the best of my knowledge, no doctor has been prosecuted in the interim. I am conscious that a number of psychiatrists, including the late Dr. Anthony Clare, said that suicide and mental health had become a wedge in other jurisdictions for the introduction of abortion. Dr. Clare changed his view from being pro-choice in 1992 to being pro-life in 2002. I refer to the 1973 Roe v. Wade case which changed the attitude in the United States to abortion. Norma McCorvey was the woman who took the case and she subsequently became a strong pro-life advocate.

What concerns me about the suicide issue is that suicide cannot be diagnosed. In Britain one in every four or five pregnancies ends in abortion. Approximately 600 abortions a day are carried out in Britain where since 1967 approximately 7 million of the unborn have been aborted. Only 143 were undertaken for the reason that the mother's life was at risk. Abortion has become so routine that 48,000 women have had more than one abortion, with some having as many as eight. I recently spoke to a doctor in Dublin who told me about a patient who was about to undergo her fifth or sixth abortion. It is regarded as a form of contraception. These statistics need to be factored into our deliberations.

I do not doubt the best intentions of Mr. David Steel when he introduced abortion legislation in Britain in order to deal with the hard cases. He has subsequently acknowledged that he never envisaged a situation where the Act would lead to almost 200,000 abortions a year. He said, "I don't think we expected anything like those numbers." We need to consider what has happened in other jurisdictions.

I have spoken to many psychiatrists and have yet to meet one who regards abortion as a treatment for suicidal ideation. I refer to the guidelines for reporting instances of suicide and self-harm produced by the Irish Association of Suicidology and Samaritans. I refer to an esteemed Member of the Oireachtas who has dedicated a large part of his public life to dealing with the issue of suicide. He has said we should avoid simplistic explanations for suicide. Although a catalyst may appear to be obvious, suicide is never the result of a single factor or event and is likely to have several inter-related causes. People do not decide to take their own lives in response to a single event, however painful it may be. Social conditions alone cannot explain suicide. The reasons an individual takes his or her life are manifold and suicide should not be portrayed as the inevitable outcome of serious personal problems. We have evidence from other jurisdictions. Psychiatrists say it is very difficult to diagnose a possible suicide. Even pro-choice psychiatrists agree that in some instances abortion can worsen the mental health of the mother and may aggravate her situation. Once a principle is conceded that abortion is all right in certain circumstances, as Dr. Clare said, it will be used as a wedge to make future legislation more liberal. We must guard against such a view. There are probably 300,000 or 400,000 people alive in Ireland today who would not be if our abortion regime had been more liberal in the past 30 years.

I acknowledge that many women find themselves in a bad place with a crisis or unwanted pregnancy. This is primarily a woman's issue, but I do not accept that it is not one for society also. I refer to cases of fatal foetal abnormality which have been cited. These are very challenging cases. I met representatives of the National Women's Council. However, I also met the One Day More group. These women had carried a foetus to birth and it had subsequently died. However, they received some solace from being able to hold the baby. Rape is a heinous crime which is probably not dealt with as harshly as it should be. At the recent pro-life rally I met a grandfather, a son and a grandchild. The grandfather acknowledged that he was the result of a rape. I refer to my point about the continuum of life. When the life of the unborn is terminated, an entire lineage is destroyed. In advance of the budget all parties were anxious to acknowledge that we had a duty of care to protect the most vulnerable in society.