Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I have great respect for him. However, I want to make it quite clear that I do not welcome the legislation he has brought before us. I will try to be as brief as I can, given the hour of the night. Like other Senators, I have to travel a long distance to go home before returning here early in the morning. I certainly have no intention of keeping people here any longer than is necessary. This is the first time I have spoken on this Bill and it will probably be the last time I speak on it. I assure colleagues that I am conscientiously obstructing nobody. I am merely making my points in a democratic fashion in this House.

I just want to put it on the record that the legislation we have spent 15 hours discussing is about life and death. That is what I believe, and some of my colleagues in this House share that opinion. Over recent months, we have been subjected to obstruction in the legal sphere. I refer to the legislation that proposes to change how judges are appointed. It does not affect whether they live or die. I just want to put that on the record.

Like my colleague, Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill, I want to read an extract from a letter. The letter to which I refer was written by Dr. Fiona O'Hanlon, who is known to myself, to Senator Robbie Gallagher and to our colleague in the Lower House, Deputy Brendan Smith. Rather than going off on a tangent, I want to read as clearly as possible an edited section of the letter, which was published in a national newspaper.It really states what I want to say myself:

It is worth exploring the implications for doctors, nurses, [pharmacists] and all healthcare professionals if their rights of conscience are not respected in law. Every person has a right to freedom of conscience whereby they cannot be compelled to perform or facilitate an action which they believe to be morally wrong. The right to freedom of conscience acknowledges the fact that we are responsible for our free actions and their consequences inasmuch as we can foresee them. It also acknowledges the fact that we cannot disclaim responsibility for our free actions simply because we are obeying the will of another person.

Because freedom of conscience is respected in a democratic society, there is also the right to refuse to perform or participate in an action with which the person does not agree. Doctors, like everybody else, have the right to freedom of conscience. They are entitled to refuse to provide treatment which they consider to be morally wrong because to provide it would make the doctor responsible for the outcome. They are also entitled to refuse to facilitate access to that treatment because that too would mean the doctor shares responsibility.

In the case of abortion, many doctors have profoundly held convictions about the right to life of the unborn child and they have the right not to perform any procedure which would deliberately end the child's life. They also have the right not to facilitate abortion by giving information about, or contact details of, abortion providers.

Furthermore, doctors have the right to refuse to refer patients for abortion procedures. This is because, when a doctor refers a patient to another doctor for treatment, the referring doctor is agreeing that the treatment is necessary and in the patient's interest. This is usually because the referring doctor does not have the required specialist training and so has to request another doctor to look after the patient. In the case of abortion, however, the referring doctor may have the required training but still object in conscience. Referral for abortion would be asking another doctor to do something which the referring doctor believes to be totally wrong. It does not lessen the referring doctor's responsibility for the outcome and so goes against his or her freedom of conscience.

Abortion legislation must recognise that doctors have the right not to perform abortions and the right not to refer or provide information. Abortion legislation must also acknowledge the right of medical students and trainee doctors to refuse to participate in procedures which they do not intend to perform as professionals because of conscientious objection.

I want to briefly refer to Baroness Nuala O'Loan, the former Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, who is well known to all of us in this House. She recently gave a first reading of a piece of legislation in the House of Lords. Some of the detail that I have before me has already been alluded to by Senator Ó Domhnaill and I do not intend to repeat it. However, it is important to make three or four points from her contribution on that legislation. She points out that conscientious objection was first provided for in the United Kingdom in 1757. We celebrated the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War a couple of months ago. During that war, 16,000 men were excused from conscription to military service on grounds of conscience. They included Quakers, who did not believe in fighting on religious grounds, and others. This is most interesting for some of my colleagues in this House who are most anxious to get this legislation through. Baroness O'Loan says: "Others, such as radical socialists, did so out of political principle." These were conscientious objections. I suggest that those radical socialists were every bit as well meaning in their conscientious objection as the radical socialists we have in this House and the Lower House.

I also want to refer to what Senator Bacik mentioned about the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly adoption of Resolution 1763. I think that is the one to which Senator Bacik referred.