Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh an Aire Stáit go dtí an Teach. I have listened today and yesterday to the contributions of colleagues in the House. I realise fully that this is a divisive and controversial Bill which will see the culture on abortion in Ireland change forever. Abortion is always a violent response to a crisis. In our desire to be compassionate to women, let us not lose sight of the fact that there are at least two human lives involved in a pregnancy. Either human rights begin with human life or we engage in a dangerous policy of creating categories of lesser lives.

I pay tribute in particular to the five Government Deputies who voted against the legislation, including Deputy Peter Mathews, who is in the Visitors Gallery. They put their consciences first. As Martin Luther King said, cowardice asks if it is expedient, expedience asks if it is politic, vanity asks if it is popular but consciences asks if it is right. There comes a time when one must decide that while it is neither safe nor politic nor popular, one must act because conscience tells one it is right. Who am I to question another person's conscience whether he or she supports the legislation or is against it? Why should Deputy Eamon Gilmore's conscience in supporting the legislation determine the consciences of people who oppose it? That is simply wrong. It was a grave mistake that the Government parties did not allow Senators and Deputies to vote freely in accordance with their consciences. The manner in which the five Deputies, one of whom was an able and professional Minister of State, have been treated by their party leadership and the Government has been deplorable. We can deal with that as the debate goes on.

I have major problems with the legislation. It will involve the most significant vote I will have cast in my short time in the Seanad. It will be a vote on a life and death issue. The problems I have are legal and medical. Abortion in itself is never a treatment for suicide. The legislation as compiled is deeply flawed. The Supreme Court ruling in 1992 was based on the information that was available at the time, namely the opinion of a psychologist rather than a doctor or psychiatrist. The information is now over 20 years old and clearly outdated. We learned that in the Oireachtas committee hearings in January and again in May. Incontrovertible evidence shows that the risk of suicide is 33% to 50% lower in pregnant females compared to non-pregnant females of a similar age. However, the risk of suicide increases significantly after an abortion. Pregnancy appears to confer a protection against suicide. This has been shown in studies published by the British Medical Journal in 1996 and the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1997. Indeed, Finnish studies on all registers in the country between 1987 and 1994 found no case of suicide in pregnancy and a three-fold increase in suicide for those in the first year after an abortion.

Doctors always update their practice. They would not continue to practise medicine on the basis of opinions, guidance or procedures which were 20 years old. That would be outdated. Not one Senator would go to a GP who was practising out-of-date medicine. Why are we legislating then for a procedure which will end the lives of unborn children based on a judgment which is clearly out of date? The risk of suicide in pregnancy is estimated at one in 250,000. It has a 3% positive prediction value. The inclusion of suicide will mean a high false positive rate. Assessing suicide is subjective and extremely difficult, as we have learned from medical experts. Pro-life and pro-choice psychiatrists are the first to admit that they cannot accurately predict suicide. Consequently, there may be a large number of terminations to potentially get it correct. This opens the floodgates over time. Studies have shown that one must predict 30 suicides to get one correct. Reviews demonstrate that 35 babies would have to be aborted to ensure one correct decision. How much more must one say to show that this is clearly wrong? Anyone who listened to all of the medical evidence offered on the pro-choice and on the pro-life side will know. Deep down, the Government knows this is flawed and the wrong way to go.

Crisis pregnancies often present late when it is very difficult to give an accurate age of the baby. The Bill allows pregnancies to be terminated up to term. Of those that would survive delivery at 25 weeks, 50% would be left with conditions such as cerebral palsy and severe disablement, including mental retardation, blindness and hearing problems. The State will have induced disability by way of induced prematurity in what would otherwise have been healthy babies. It is not in the public interest to carry out terminations at the cusp of viability or post-viability for reasons of suicide. Problems of prematurity exist until approximately 37 weeks. Not even modern medicine can prevent them. Will these children be taken into State care? It would be a new low in Irish health care, similar to countries with poor human rights records, and come shortly after the Government cut mobility allowance for the disabled. The foetus has no constitutional rights unless it makes it out of the womb alive. Ironically, after 24 weeks, the foetus has fewer rights than in the United Kingdom which has liberal abortion laws. This represents a new low in Irish health care.