Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support the amendment and I will add to Senator Mullen's remarks. The amendment seeks to ensure that unintended consequences are mitigated and that the legislation could not in some way be used for an unintended objective outside that which the legislation sets out to achieve. Technology is advancing and continually evolving in Ireland or elsewhere. The legislation before us will potentially define our stance on this issue for a generation or two. Technological advances in that timeframe will be much greater than they are today. Therefore, the detection capability that arises from that will also change. It would be regrettable if one of the unintended consequences of the Bill were that abortions could for some reason occur due to the sex. I am not saying that will occur but it could be an outcome and no one can argue to the contrary because we cannot predict what will happen.

The area of disability concerned many people during the course of the referendum campaign and subsequently. I agree with Senator Norris. We all know people with disabilities, including people with Down's syndrome. I have some very good friends with Down's syndrome who make an exceptional contribution to their local community. We all know people who have done that. This legislation is not framed in a vacuum and we must learn from what happens in other jurisdictions.

In 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published a report on abortion and the rights of persons with disabilities. The committee's criticism of the UK Government for the lack of progress on a range of disability rights issues made headlines. The report also contained an argument around a controversial issue related to the UK's policy on disability selective abortions. It stated:

The Committee is concerned about perceptions in society that stigmatize persons with disabilities as living a life of less value than that of others and the termination of pregnancy at any stage on the basis of fetal impairment.

The Committee recommends that the State party amend its abortion law accordingly. Women’s rights to reproductive and sexual autonomy should be respected without legalizing selective abortions on the ground of fetal deficiency.

This is not a new or unexpected development. The United Kingdom is merely the latest country to feature on a list that includes Austria, Hungary and Spain to which the committee has recommended reforms on conditions that allow for later term limits in abortions relating to disability. The UK's Abortion Act 1967 prohibits most abortions after 24 weeks' gestation. However, section 1(1)(d) of the Act provides that where the child would be seriously handicapped - this is Ground E in official UK abortion parlance - the limit does not apply. Therefore, in the UK abortions can theoretically take place up to birth. In 2016, 3,208 Ground E abortions were carried out in the UK, comprising approximately 2% of the overall abortion figure. Of these abortions, 225 happened at 24 weeks' gestation or over, that is, over the limit for children without disabilities. Between 1995 and 2016, the incidence of Ground E abortions carried out in Britain after 24 weeks' gestation increased by 263%.In its 2016 abortion report, the National Health Service in the UK warned that these figures should be treated with caution as it is likely that there is a significant undercount, so the data may not be fully representative of the rate of abortion on those grounds.

In 2014, it was discovered that half of the ground E notifications to the National Health Service were missing. Despite some improvement, the pattern continues today as I understand it. These figures include what Irish abortion activists would term as abortions for fatal foetal abnormalities such as anencephaly, contradicting arguments that the concepts of fatal abnormality and disability are never conflated.

An examination of some of the other conditions that count as abortion-worthy disabilities in England and Wales is revealing as well. For instance, in 2016, the figures available from the NHS indicate that nine abortions were for cleft lip and cleft palate and that 706 abortions were carried out in the case of Down's syndrome diagnosis. Only a few hundred of these were late-term abortions, not worth reporting on according to the NHS. They were not worth recording. My answer to that is that to turn a blind eye to discrimination is often to collude in it.