Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is forgetting something. I am not proposing to create anything; I am trying to keep what is already there. The Minister is the one who is proposing to step down a protection established in the law, which is a modest enough one, that is, the simple idea that the presumption is in favour of preserving life. That is all. Instead the Minister is potentially leaving a family with a situation where, in already stressful circumstances, they have to make an application to the court to dispute or ask that in the absence of clear provisions in an advance healthcare directive about what is to happen in the case of a pregnancy, treatment would be given, despite a general refusal in the advance healthcare directive, so as to protect the unborn child. The Minister is potentially putting the burden on some family member to have to go to the court in order to vindicate and protect the life of the late-term and unborn child.

I do not know what to believe about what the Government thinks about abortion because things seems to have become so ideological that nothing that could remotely redound to the benefit of the unborn child is to be allowed to be stated in law anymore. The Minister keeps forgetting that I am not talking about this being a termination of pregnancy and that I am not confusing this with the law around abortion. I am trying to draw the Minister's attention to the standards and public policy vision that underlie the law on abortion and I am asking him to draw the conclusion of that about how we should then treat advance healthcare directives. Our law on abortion states that life has value and it is saying an unborn child has a right under law to be protected from the termination of pregnancy to a considerable degree after 12 weeks in the womb. If that is so then surely it follows that in something not connected with termination of pregnancy but something closely related that will potentially involve the termination of a life, there would at least be the presumption that one would give life-sustaining treatment so as to protect the unborn where the advance healthcare directive is silent.

There is another aspect to it that previously required that where the advance healthcare directive said even if there is pregnancy we want to refuse treatment and the current provision is that one goes to the High Court and the Government is proposing to get rid of that as well. Let us focus on the first one. There is still the possibility of an application to the High Court but there is a provision being removed that provides that where an advance healthcare directive provides that even if pregnant treatment should be refused. In those circumstances, the 2015 law provides that such a matter would be determined by the High Court and the Minister is also proposing to remove that. I am not specifically addressing myself to that because it is clearly more clear-cut that people have said they want to refuse treatment. That is closer to the compos mentissituation the Minister described earlier. However, where an advance healthcare directive is silent on what is to happen in the case of pregnancy it seems to me the presumption that life would be preserved should not be removed. This is not a point that is particularly on the ideological end of the spectrum for me to be making.I am sure there are a lot of people who would be proudly pro-choice in their own self-understanding and self-expression who would say that it should at least be the presumption that you would protect life. Because the Minister has an ideological fixation about a kind of equality, however, he is willing to disregard the spirit of what exists in the abortion legislation, which is that life beyond a certain point should be protected where possible. Not only that but he is potentially forcing a family into the situation where they have to rely on some other section and go to the court for a determination about the AHD. That is cruel. Furthermore, he is exposing the unborn child in that situation, potentially a late-term unborn child, to the risk that there will be some kind of a dispute that the application might not be made to the court, or if the application is made to the court that there will be some kind of a dispute and the court washes its hands of it. All of this I find to be quite callous and cruel. I ask that the Minister, at the very least will say he will go back and think about this before Report Stage. That is not a lot to ask.