Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have listened with great interest and with great respect to the contributions so far on Senators MacConghail’s and O’Donnell’s amendments. There are so many different threads to this issue but I am happy overall that the tone of this debate is one of respect. Hopefully, we can keep that going over the coming days. I certainly will do my best.

We ought to because this is an issue quite unlike any other. Members are radically divided on this issue. We have to be honest but this is an issue across the world that tragically causes people to end up hating one another. That is never how it should be among human beings. Our duty is to love one another. It is understandable how it can get extremely difficult for people. Accordingly, we need to be very tolerant with one another. I may believe that someone else’s view on this compromises an innocent child’s right to life. I also realise that others may sincerely believe that my views compromise somebody else’s right to autonomy or even dignity or their freedom or sense of self.

I recall Breda O’Brien writing several years ago about having been involved in a wonderful initiative called 5,000 Too Many. She, along with Professor Patricia Casey and others who would style themselves pro-choice, organised a conference with a view to working on what we can agree. What they agreed on was how to reduce the number of abortions. I would like more things like that happening in our country.

There is a time for all of us to be sincere about what we believe. That just does not refer to what we can objectively prove but also what we can intuit. It is intuition that causes me to say that I understand deeply and agree with what Senators Bradford and Healy Eames said about their perception of the relative outcomes for families, not just women, who made a different decision relating to a child who was terminally ill and unborn. It is intuition that causes me to agree to have a deep sense that there is a truth about being patient even in moments of pain.

Nobody here has a monopoly on compassion or courage. Will the Minister extend his respect for courage not just to the group, Termination of Pregnancy for Medical Reasons, but also to the One Day More group? I know other Senators generously paid tribute to that group. They too are wise people who have suffered. They have loved and lost. I was honoured, along with Senators Darragh O’Brien and Mary Ann O’Brien and Deputies Regina Doherty and Arthur Spring, to co-host a presentation by the families of One Day More. These are people who continued to love a child with a severe disability diagnosed in pregnancy. In some cases, the child was terminally ill and died very shortly after birth. In other cases, it was a severe disability that had caused doctors to give the most negative prognosis and to be very dubious about the duty of care to such children. Nonetheless, patience and love won out and happier outcomes were experienced. Those people turned many of our heads that day. A quarter of the entire Oireachtas, some 60 Members, gathered to hear them.

In debating this very difficult issue, I do feel a deep debt of gratitude not just to the woman who brought me into the world but to the former Minister of State, Deputy Lucinda Creighton, and Senators Mary Ann O’Brien and Healy Eames. I am not suggesting they are better than anyone else but, by articulating their deep concern about the preciousness of all human life, they give permission to people like me and other men who face censure, cruel comments and ridicule for daring to say that abortion is always unjust. We can take it but we must face it. Those women, by their witness to their deeply held values, did not just express themselves but have given permission to me to express myself. As a man, I am not objectively any less qualified to speak about these issues. Anyone who has suffered pain, who has had to contemplate the human condition, who may someday close the eyes of a loved one, who may get a diagnosis of cancer can do so - it is only those who are capable of suffering pain that can really empathise with others. That is why I want to preface my remarks that none of us here has a monopoly on compassion and courage.

On the rather dry legal argument that my friend, Senator O’Donnell, brought up about Mr. Hogan’s case, on behalf of the State, the European Court of Human Rights, he argued that remedies had not been exhausted in the Irish courts and that the Irish courts were unlikely to interpret with remorseless logic - a phrase which I found quite terrible - the provisions of Article 40.3.3°.