Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In the Minister's 15-minute speech in the Dáil when introducing the Bill on 4 October, it was telling that the words "baby", "child", "unborn" and "mother" were not used even once - not once. That tells us how much concern this legislation has for children in the womb, or for any concept of motherhood or family. I firmly believe the referendum decision and the introduction of this legislation are decisions which will be rued by future generations but that is a debate for another day.

I want to turn, briefly, to what is at the heart of this Bill, and it is truly frightening. The Bill defines "termination of pregnancy", as "a medical procedure which is intended to end the life of a foetus". That is worth repeating: "Intended to end the life of a foetus". It is telling that on an issue so laden with euphemism, no other form of words could be found to diminish or minimise the sheer gravity of this statement. This legislation does exactly what it says on the tin - it ends the lives of unborn children. It is a situation beyond tears. This has ceased to be something the Minister and the Government feel they have to gloss over. It is now worn on their sleeves; it is something they are proud of. Even extreme pro-choice campaigners, however, are embarrassed by just how stark that statement is.

On Committee and Report Stages in the Dáil, they tabled amendments thiat tried to tone down the language, removing the reference to the "ending of life", and replacing it with the usual language of "healthcare", and so forth. Those amendments were rejected and, therefore, the brutal reality of this Bill - the ending the life - is plain for all to see, written in black and white. This Bill is the first piece of legislation to be brought before the Oireachtas with the specific aim of authorising the ending of life since the Public Safety Acts of the 1920s and 1930s, which authorised the imposition of the death penalty. Now, more than 90 years later, the ending of life is again before the House, only this time it is packaged as "healthcare". It is a strange world where healthcare involves legislating for the deliberate ending of innocent human life. Will the Minister please address this and answer that question directly? What other "healthcare" involves ending a life? Can he point to other healthcare legislation on the Statute Book that refers to "ending the life" of something or someone? I would be interested to hear a specific answer on that point.

The Minister is not even here. This debate in the Seanad is seen as a tidying-up event, another example of what Hannah Arendt referred to when she talked about the "banality of evil". The fact that ending the life of any human being should be seen as some great advance in human rights or healthcare is grotesque in the extreme. Under this legislation, abortions are to be carried out entirely at the expense of the taxpayer. The Long Title of the Bill says that it aims "to make available without charge certain services to women for the purpose of termination of pregnancy". The grotesque figure of €12 million was put aside in the recent budget for the introduction of these services.

Abortion is an elective procedure, that is to say, in virtually all cases, that it is a procedure which is optional and not medically indicated or urgently needed to save a life. Perhaps the Minister can also answer this question: what other elective procedures are performed entirely at the expense of the State and taxpayers in all cases? I cannot think of any. Representatives of the ICGP, and the IGO were asked this same question at the recent Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health hearings on 19 September. They could not identify another elective procedure funded entirely by the taxpayer. Can the Minister please address this point? Why is abortion - and only abortion - to be the only elective procedure funded entirely by the State? How can this be justified, when other elective procedures will still be paid for by the person receiving the treatment, that is if they can endure lengthy waiting lists? Following decades of talking about universal healthcare, free at the point of treatment, it has finally been achieved, but only for the provision of abortion. What a shameful day for the health service.

The issue of freedom of conscience was brought into sharp focus by the emergency general meeting, EGM, of the ICGP last weekend which was convened to discuss this Bill. Always a man for a good soundbite, the Minister dismissed the doctors' concerns and was quoted last weekend as stating:

The law on abortion is changing. The law on conscientious objection is not changing.

Any rational analysis of this Bill, however, shows that this is simply not the case. As the law stands, if a woman presents at her GP to request an abortion, the GP can inform her that he or she will not take part in such a procedure, and at that point his or her legal obligations end. Under the Bill, however, if the same GP refuses to carry out the termination, a new legal obligation is placed on him or her to refer the mother and her baby to another GP in order for that doctor to terminate the life of the baby. By definition, therefore, the law on conscientious objection is being changed, despite the ministerial Orwellian doublespeak. Whereas today, a doctor can freely, and in accordance with his or her conscience, refuse to facilitate a termination of pregnancy in any way, shape or form, because he or she does not believe that it is not medicine or is not good for the mother and the baby in their best clinical and ethical judgement, from the day this new law comes into force, he or she r will be forced to facilitate a termination as a third party. It is doublespeak of the most nonsensical and objectionable kind for the Minister to suggest that such a fundamental change in the law is not a change in the law at all.As well as looking at what is in the Bill, we also need to address what is not in it. The Government could have included provisions to address a number of serious concerns expressed by voters, including a large number of those who voted "Yes". For example, there is no provision in the Bill to protect children who may be targeted in the womb as a result of being diagnosed with Down's syndrome and other genetic conditions where that occurs within the 12-week period, when no reason has to be given. This Bill brings about the appalling vista whereby a pregnancy which is entirely wanted by its parents ends up being “unwanted” and aborted, solely as a result of screening tests which show the baby may have Down's syndrome, or on the basis of the gender of the child. How can that be right?

The Minister, Deputy Harris, speaks about compassion and humane treatment. Where is the compassion and the humanity in making it perfectly legal for babies who are unwanted solely because of a genetic disability to have their lives ended? The Minister wrote in the Irish Independentthe day before the referendum: “We’ve specifically excluded disability for grounds for abortion in the legislation". I heard his former party colleague, Deputy Fitzpatrick, mention last week that Fine Gael head office produced a graphic for Twitter during the campaign, which stated: “termination on grounds of disability is prohibited”. The Minister says this is “specifically excluded” and Fine Gael says it is “prohibited”. Can the Minister please tell me where in the Bill is it “specifically excluded” or “prohibited”? The lawyers in the House will tell us that for legislation to specifically exclude or prohibit something, there must be explicit language in it which excludes or prohibits it. No such language exists in the Bill. Can the Minister please point it out to me, if I am wrong? What was it I said about Orwell? Can he also explain why, if both he and his party favour such an exclusion or prohibition, they opposed amendments to that effect in the Dáil? I look forward to addressing these issues and many others at later Stages of our consideration of the legislation.

Recent opinion poll research gives us a clue as to why the Government is in such a hurry to pass this legislation. A poll conducted by Amárach Research recently shows very strong opposition to core aspects of the legislation. Amárach found that just 30% of the electorate support abortion being funded by taxpayers, compared to 44% against. They found that 68% support the right of full conscientious objection for doctors not to participate in abortions, compared to just 17% against. With opinion polls showing such a huge level of public opposition to the main proposals in the Bill, is it any wonder the Minister wants to dismiss these amendments and ram the whole thing through as quickly as possible before a general election, whenever that takes place? With such huge opposition to the more extreme and heartless aspects of this Bill, I do not blame the Minister, Deputy Harris, for not engaging with voters on the amendments, or, rather, I understand why the Minister does not want to engage with voters on them - it would be wrong of me to say I do not blame him.

On Report Stage in the Dáil, the details of this opinion poll were referred to during a debate on an amendment relating to the use of ultrasound, for which the poll found strong public support. The Minister responded with what I thought was a very revealing comment. He said:

We hear a lot about opinion polls, Amárach being one, but we had a really big one where people went out and voted in the referendum in May. ... People made their decision in respect of this.

In the referendum, people were asked a binary question in the referendum: did they want to repeal the eighth amendment and give the Oireachtas power to legislate - "Yes" or "No"? The use of ultrasound, the freedom of conscience of doctors or the abortion of disabled children, and so on - none of these issues was on the ballot paper last May. Yet, the Minister is now using the referendum result, which merely gave the responsibility to the Oireachtas to decide how to regulate abortion in this State, conservatively or permissively, as it saw fit, to justify rejecting even thinking about any of these humanising amendments. He is ignoring amendments on the basis of this flimsy justification and, in fact, shutting down discussion on these issues. Essentially, he interprets the referendum result as giving him carte blancheto legislate in any manner he sees fit. How can this be right, particularly when 34% voted "No", and when so many "Yes" voters had serious concerns?

This is just the latest in a long line of recent examples of referenda being used and abused to justify populist grandstanding by our political class, and this Government in particular, but to do so at the expense of innocent unborn children and in a way that sets its face against any idea that abortion, even were it to be legal, is something to be regretted, or something on which we should try to build public policy so people choose differently. None of that seems to be permitted anymore, as a class of right-on politicians try the ultimate Orwellian stunt of trying to turn abortion into some kind of social good, which it can never be for the children who lose their lives or, indeed, for many of the women who suffer, despite the denials, despite the refusal to engage in discussion about abortion regret, despite the cynicism shown in the Dáil to real-life examples where women spoke about their abortion regret and despite the ridiculing of actual cases where it had occurred that people had survived abortions and gone on to live.

Despite all the negativity and the ridicule, there is a truth here. The truth is that innocent human life is lost. Adult life is wounded. This is a bad, bad day. It is certainly what I would regard as one of the saddest days in these Houses in recent years. People have given themselves, and the politicians here want to create some notion of, a right to choose that completely disregards an innocent, invisible but no less human creature. I hope and believe there will be a better day when we will find a way to heal the breaches that have been created here in this destructive law, which sets men and women against each other, which sets mothers and children against each other and which sets its face against finding a better and more humane way to deal with crisis pregnancy and protect all the human beings involved.