Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. The Minister and the Ministers of State at the Department of Health, Deputies James Reilly, Alex White and Kathleen Lynch, have collectively paid the House great attention, which we appreciate. I join Members who have thanked Deputy Jerry Buttimer for organising the hearings on the issues which are the subject of the Bill. I also welcome Deputy Peter Mathews to the House. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform is significantly poorer following his removal over the issue of the Bill. He has great expertise in that regard. Having said that, I support broadly the Bill with all of the reservations set out by Senator Jillian van Turnhout. I listened with great interest to Senators John Gilroy, David Cullinane and Deirdre Clune on the issue yesterday. The Bill is unlikely to have any significant impact on the number of women going to the United Kingdom annually for abortions. It has been 4,000 a year for 30 years. The legislation does nothing for the victims of rape, incest, fatal foetal abnormalities or the victims of under-age sex. A 14 year old lady said to me that we could look at the issues of rape and incest.

In the research I have looked at a human embryo is called a foetus eight weeks after fertilisation or ten weeks after the last menstrual period. When we talk about the foetus, are we really talking about an embryo? Is that really as serious? Things have changed since the penalties were set out in the 1861 Act. What was being prosecuted in 1861 may have been something completely different from what is happening today. Progress is made on issues and scientific and other knowledge changes. I agree with Senator John Gilroy's comments yesterday that Savita Halappanaver might have been saved from sepsis had the abortion she required been carried out on the dreaded Tuesday. That alone makes the Bill worth supporting.

I am concerned about the provisions on registrars and recording. We ought to observe doctor-patient confidentiality in these matters. I acknowledge that the Minister wishes to monitor things, but I am not sure we should seek to undermine the doctor-patient relationship or punish hospitals which may have a different tradition or way of doing things. Diversity is important in these matters.

I note from Senator Feargal Quinn that 80% of Italian doctors have conscientious objections. We should also think of the 120,000 to 150,000 people with conscientious objections who went to England. Staff are being somewhat precious, to say the least, in their objections. The victims have been the women who have had to leave the jurisdiction. The woman's consent is always required, not just for nine months but for life thereafter. Rearing children and preparing them for life is a major task, not lightly to be entered into. Family planning can go wrong. Some of the examples given yesterday included people in late middle age going to England. They decided for themselves that they had had enough children, that they could not cope or that the risk of abnormalities had increased. We leave them with the responsibility to rear these children and ought to take into account the reasons they felt it necessary to go to England.

As Senator John Gilroy told us eloquently yesterday, suicide is an illness. If we knew what could prevent it, we would all be better off. Senator John Gilroy and Deputy Dan Neville have worked in this area for ages.

I recall Gerry McEntee, an eminent surgeon, choking up in a radio interview as he spoke about the pain of not understanding what had happened to his brother, the late Deputy and Minister of State Shane McEntee. If we had the answers when it comes to suicide, we would be more successful in our efforts to prevent it. We are contemplating saying to a troubled teenager that we do not believe her when she says she is suicidal. The members of the panels who will make these decisions will be taking the risk that the woman or girl will subsequently take her own life. I would find it very difficult to take that chance.

I agree with other speakers that the penalties for illegally performed abortions, inherited from the 1861 Act, are excessive. We are coming out of a very dark age in terms of the treatment of women in this country. We had, in effect, an incarceration society, with 20,000 people installed in various mental hospitals, reformatories and Magdalen laundries, some with no prospect of release. There was also widespread physical brutality in schools and abuse of children and women on a broad scale.

It is a pity that section 7 provides that a woman will only be entitled to a termination where there is a risk to her life as opposed to her health. I would not like to be in that type of situation, but I appreciate the difficulties the Minister faced in framing these provisions. There is immense complexity in the requirements, whereby decisions in these cases will be made, including the unanimous approval of three medical practitioners, after which a woman might have to appeal to a review panel of ten medical practitioners. One wonders how our already stretched health service will cope with all of these review panels and so on, as set out in sections 9 and 10. I also have concerns about the provision that a review must take place within seven days. If we are talking about the development of an embryo into a foetus, why are we wasting seven days in examining the pregnant woman? I am also concerned about the requirement for various reports to be sent to the Health Service Executive. Why does it have to be involved in all of this?

There is a requirement for a new respect for women and the problems they have encountered in the past and are still encountering today. Why are they travelling to Britain in such large numbers? Why did we incarcerate so many people in mental hospitals, reformatories and laundries? Why was there so much child abuse? Why was so much of it covered up and why are those who were found to have engaged in it and the institutions to which they belong refusing to acknowledge their guilt? Women who become pregnant against their will or better judgment do not merit the type of demonisation we have seen in the course of this debate. There are many before them in the line who are surely more deserving of our disdain.

At the same time, we are seeing an honest and sincere attempt to redress wrongs that have accumulated over a very long period. The contributions of the Senators I mentioned have been outstanding. The Oireachtas committee, under the chairmanship of Deputy Jerry Buttimer, also made an outstanding contribution to the discourse on this issue. There is a huge generational gap, with young people generally unable to countenance what all the bitterness and disputes are about. I appreciate the difficulties and constraints the Minister faced in framing the legislation, but I would have gone further than what is contained in the Bill. Notwithstanding the work that remains to be done to improve the lot of women in Irish society, I will be supporting the legislation. Perhaps if we had more women in positions of authority in the churches, in medicine and Parliament, some of the problems we have been discussing in recent months might not have arisen.