Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

My view is very simple. I believe the vast majority of children who become pregnant will do so as a result of crime. The exact circumstances of that crime, and whether the perpetrator was related to the child, connected to her, in a position of dominance or whatever, are irrelevant or simply a matter of casual connection. These are not matters of interest to me. I am looking at this simply from the point of view of a young woman or girl who is pregnant as a result of a crime. I am asking myself if we should accommodate in law a rule whereby her parents must become involved when she, in her own right, decides to defend herself against a continuation of a pregnancy which arises from a crime. I am against that. I am against the idea that there should be some mandatory arrangement whereby any young girl in that situation who takes the step of seeking help to terminate her pregnancy which has arisen as a result of a crime should be subject to some overarching arrangement in the law of the State that her parents much become involved as a matter of mandatory requirement in how this situation is dealt with. I am totally sympathetic to the notion that in the great majority of cases that would happen, however, in the greater scheme of things, it may not happen in many cases.The fact that the parents of a girl in such circumstances must be informed might inhibit her from seeking help or an appropriate termination.

Senator Mullen has included as a kind of safeguard the idea that somehow that the High Court could dispense with that requirement, but that makes an absolute mockery of the girl's right to defend herself from the consequences of a crime. The idea that a High Court judge should be involved in determining the circumstances in which a girl would terminate such a pregnancy is grossly excessive in terms of being a safeguard, as Senator Mullen is suggesting in good faith, and also utterly intimidating to the girl. If an 18 year old woman is to be allowed to terminate a pregnancy without cause shown, the same right must be extended to a child without the statutory requirement to involve her parents in that decision subject to the right of the High Court to abrogate such requirement.

Let us be logical about this. Child pregnancies arise in many different situations. I do not suggest that the perpetrator would be a father, brother, cousin, boyfriend or total stranger in any particular case, but a girl in those circumstances faces the same consequence no matter how her predicament arose, the extent or absence of consent or her attitude to the perpetrator. I am totally opposed to the principle behind the amendment and the amendment itself.