John Gilroy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and congratulate him on the amount of work he has put into ensuring this Bill reached us successfully in the House.

As soon as I walk into this House, I feel I am no longer a private individual speaking from a private perspective. I am a public representative and my personal feelings on a substantive issue, whatever they may be, are irrelevant in this regard. They are irrelevant because this is a constitutional issue. If I were talking about ordinary legislation, my personal opinion would play a very large part in it, but the provisions of the Constitution, as it stands and as adjudicated on by the people, who spoke on this matter on two separate occasions, are not in line with our legislative position. There are only two options available to us; there is not a third. The first is to call for a referendum to bring the Constitution into line with existing law. I would not be in favour of that because we already have had two referendums on this issue. The only other option is to bring the legislative position into line with the Constitution. That is the intention of this Bill. I am here as a public representative, not a private individual. When I walk out the gates of Leinster House I will again be a private person, but when I am acting in the Legislature as a legislator my personal opinions should not enter into it at all. This is my genuinely held conviction and people might disagree with that. People need to allow for the fact that it is a genuinely held view.

The Supreme Court has ruled on the issue. People say its judgment is not binding legally. Whether it is or not should not make much difference because, as a democrat, I do not believe we have to wait to be told or be forced to legislate, by a court or anybody else. As mature democrats in a mature democracy, we need to take responsibility. For the past 21 years, successive Governments have failed to do so. It is past time that we did so.

I do not want to say that the debate thus far has not been comprehensive because it certainly has been. There were up to 24 hours of debate on this matter in the Lower House. Probably the same time is scheduled for a debate in this House. I do not want to say that the debate has been dishonest; it has not been, as people hold genuine positions, but the debate has, in many regards, been selective. For example, I have heard it said time and again that the Supreme Court did not hear medical evidence. It did not because that is not its duty. The court rules on points of law, not on points of fact; that is a very basic distinction. This has been missed in the argument. To say the Supreme Court got it wrong because it did not hear points of fact misses the point fundamentally and is to misunderstand its function.

I am loath to refer to the Savita Halappanavar case. I have heard it said time and again that the cause of her death was medical misadventure. It was not. The verdict in the inquest was medical misadventure but the cause of death was septicaemia. That is a very great distinction also. It was said at the inquest by an expert in this area that if Ms Halappanavar had been allowed to have a termination on the Tuesday, there would have been a good chance that she would be alive today. Despite this, it has been said in this House and many other places that there is no evidence to suggest that abortion is a medical treatment. Of course it is medical treatment. It has been said by an expert that it might have saved the woman's life had she been allowed to have an abortion on the Tuesday as opposed to the Wednesday, when her condition had deteriorated to such a state that she was, unfortunately, beyond help.

There are many other points that require clarity. One goes to the very core of what has been said on suicide, mostly in this Chamber and also outside it. I am a psychiatric nurse and have been practising in the area of acute admissions for 28 years. While I am not an expert on suicide, I have certainly come across it many times in my professional role and as a rapporteur on suicide for the Joint Committee on Health and Children, and, therefore, I have some understanding of it. The way in which suicide has been discussed in this House and in the wider debate shows great disregard for the seriousness of the issue. Suicidal ideation is as much a medical emergency as a heart attack; there is no question about that. To downgrade it by saying people are somehow making up suicidal ideation is scandalous. It annoys me to hear it. Who said, "Abortion is not a treatment for suicide"? Any professional consultant psychiatrist that would say such a thing needs to stop practising immediately. There is no treatment for suicide. If one removes the underlying cause of suicidal ideation, one removes the suicidal ideation, but to say that abortion is not a treatment for suicide is just wrong. I would challenge any consultant psychiatrist to put their name to the statement and make it public. It will not happen. People who keep suggesting that this is the issue are wilfully misunderstanding the position, at least.

The idea that we in Fine Gael and the Labour Party are supporting this legislation only because we are whipped or because we are some kinds of mindless automatons is not correct. I firmly believe this legislation is necessary. It is desperately sensitive and presents dreadful challenges to people. Those who find themselves in need of an abortion do not arrive at that position easily. It is a desperately difficult decision for any woman to make. We need to acknowledge the complexity of the issue. Let us try to get away from the soundbites. There are some lovely sound bites but they are dishonest. If this question were of such fundamental importance to people, what difference would it make if the whip were applied? If one feels so strongly about it, one should vote against the whip. If one hides behind the whip, that is all one is doing. A speaker said this morning that Members are whipped into line on this matter. It is just ungenerous to say such a thing.

I will not say any more. I look forward to discussing the legislation further on Committee Stage. I oppose absolutely and categorically the amendment proposed by Senator Quinn. The idea of excluding suicide has set back by years the progress being made in the reduction of stigma. One wonders whether the job we are doing in trying to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness is such that we are only pretending we are making progress. This debate has exposed the idea held by certain people and groups that suicidal ideation and mental illness are not real and somehow made up. There is a view that those affected can somehow snap out of it and that they can be minded. I have heard it said, "We will mind pregnant women." I have asked on several occasions what exactly it means to be "minding" pregnant woman who are suicidal but I have failed to find an answer. What does it mean? What is the logical outworking of the suggestion? We know, and I know from my from my job, that minding people who are suicidal sometimes requires, unfortunately, the detainment of people involuntarily in psychiatric hospitals. Detaining somebody in a psychiatric hospital involuntarily requires, under section 7 of the Mental Treatment Act, that the patient be suffering from a mental disorder. In the absence of a mental disorder, suicidality on its own is not sufficient reason to detain somebody in a psychiatric hospital. There are two approaches to this. With regard to the treatment pathways that I hear about – I do not know what they are – are we proposing to detain pregnant women who are suicidal in our mental hospitals? We do not have a very good history with regard to that in this country. The way around that, of course, would be to change section 7 of the Mental Treatment Act. I have not heard any proposal to do that. Perhaps another way around it would be to change the very meaning of the English language and contend that pregnancy is, after all, a mental disorder.