Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Members of my own family and friends of mine have had miscarriages. I know as well as anybody else the difficulties that are experienced in cases of miscarriage. The difference with a miscarriage is that it is a natural death. We are legislating here for the deliberate ending of life. There is a major difference. I want to put it on the record that there is a major difference. There is no direct correlation between the two in relation to what we are saying.

Let us just look at the medical procedures. Senator Colm Burke argued that the Bill is about protecting life. Yes, it is. It is about protecting one life over another. The Bill, by extension, is also about ending life. The medical procedure defined in the Bill is a medical procedure which will end life. If we were having a debate here on capital punishment, we would be discussing a procedure that would end life. Every Member of the House and all the human rights groups outside the House would want to know what the prescribed procedure would be. It appears to be okay to legislate for a medical procedure, without being sure what that procedure will be, simply because it will be performed on a person who cannot speak - an unborn who is not among us but within the womb. I think that is wrong. I think it is very wrong.

At the weekend, I read and researched all the articles on the issue of foetal pain that were given to me after last week's debate. This issue is not something new that has come over the rainbow. As far back as 1984, the then US President, Ronald Reagan, raised the issue of foetal pain in a speech he gave. In support of that speech, 26 of the best medical brains in America wrote to the President and published an article outlining clearly that foetal pain is stronger and more abundant among unborn children after 20 weeks than it is among babies who have been born. The effect of pain on an unborn child of more than 20 weeks' gestation is greater than the effect of pain on a baby who has been born. How can we dissociate ourselves from that?