Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Further, the good faith test does not incorporate a duty to deliver a viable child from the womb alive. In other words, the reasonable opinion required imposes no duty to ensure that, where practicable, a viable child should be delivered alive rather than aborted. This will not really affect the operation of sections 1 and 8. In practice, and as a matter of law, it permits a section 9 medical procedure to effortlessly subordinate the need to preserve unborn human life to the statutory right to abort that child even where the preservation of unborn life is achievable as a matter of routine medical practice. Again, it is extremely difficult to equate all this with a guarantee to respect the equal right to life of the unborn, especially since it may in fact incentivise a medical practitioner to opt for an abortion instead of an early inducement so as to avoid questions over civil liability on foot of the disablement of a child.

Again, it is extremely difficult to equate all of this with a guarantee to respect the equal right to life of the unborn, especially since it may incentivise a medical practitioner to opt for an abortion instead of an early inducement in order to avoid questions of civil liability on foot of the disablement of a child. Such claims may well be contradicted in this House in the coming hours, but I do not believe they can be credibly contradicted. This legislation is an affront to human dignity and any normal conception of human rights. It is an affront to the great medical tradition which up to now has cared for two patients, respected and protected them and placed Ireland at the top of the world in providing the best medical care for women. I have heard people talk about situations decades ago where women were perhaps not respected in the way they should have been, but it is no argument to refer to the past and ignore our present high standards, standards the Government is now set to abandon to the tragic cost of the country.