Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I oppose these sections generally. Amendment No. 26 would abolish the three-day waiting period on the ground of "any reason", contrary to the promises repeatedly given to the people before the referendum. Abortion supporters consistently talk about respecting the mandate given by the referendum result, but they want to scrap this core commitment given in the heads of the Bill. What was said before the referendum is subject to whatever the Oireachtas decides, as the Referendum Commission pointed out, and the people voted to give the Oireachtas full powers to legislate, however extensively, conservatively or restrictively for abortion. However, paragraph 12.2 of the Medical Council's guidelines for professionals on conduct and ethics offers strong material in support of waiting to obtain consent until the patient is less stressed and has had time to consider risks. The Minister says he wants abortion to be rare, but much in the Bill gives the lie to that stated intent. The existence of at least some waiting period moves in the direction of trying to create space for a woman who finds herself in this situation to have second thoughts, as many women do.I count among my friends women who had second thoughts in time about having an abortion. We are greatly relieved that is what happened. Anything that puts people on an inevitable trajectory towards abortion adds to the terrible injustice of abortion itself. I will have other amendments that will seek to put flesh on the Minister's stated intent of creating circumstances in which women would be given every opportunity to consider a better alternative to their dilemma than abortion.

Leadership can take many forms, and the Minister spoke about leadership. It is a strange kind of leadership, however, that would add to the existing injustice of unborn children being killed under this law and the possible injustice of women being endangered in circumstances in which hospital facilities have said they are unready to implement this service. It is not good enough for the Minister to be hustling them on in the language he just used, raising questions about the Coombe Hospital. We are hearing a lot these days about the need to defer to medics on the basis that medics know best, and it is stated we are not going to write the script for medics. People seem to be very willing to do that when they want, however. Just now, the Minister spoke in very direct terms about what doctors do in this situation, about the timing of the pregnancy and so on. It is entirely unfortunate to be sending out any ministerial political messages to the Coombe Hospital or any other hospitals. There is an inevitable injustice in the loss of innocent unborn human life but I would certainly never want to do anything that would create further risk. I certainly believe the Minister should be deferring to medical facilities on this instead of hustling them on for the sake of some kind of politically motivated time limit. That is entirely the wrong approach, not just in terms of having regard to the welfare of the unborn, which I am afraid is being completely disregarded, but also in terms of the welfare of the women in question. I will leave it at that.