Supreme Court Ruling in the X Case: Motion (Private Members) 20th November 2012

This debate takes place in the aftermath of a case that, from what we know of it, is shocking beyond words. I preface my remarks by saying we do not yet have an independent account of what actually happened. Nevertheless, from the debate that has ensued since that tragic death in Galway, we now know one thing for sure that we did not know before. We know there is, indeed, a grey area.There are circumstances where it may be necessary to intervene to terminate a pregnancy to save the life of the mother.

It appears from the circumstances of Savita Halappanavar’s death that this was one such example. There have been others. Such terminations take place in Ireland, for instance where there is an ectopic pregnancy. Of course, we do not call them abortions, in order to preserve the myth. We call them terminations.

In other cases, because the risk to life is not imminent, there cannot be a termination in Ireland. Perhaps because of a heart condition or high blood pressure, the threat may not be imminent but likely to manifest later in a pregnancy. In many such cases, the mother is forced to travel to England for a life-preserving termination.

Whatever the outcome of the two investigations that are going on, we now know for certain that there are circumstances that require life saving terminations. Among the considerable correspondence we all received was a document from a group called the Life Institute, containing “three important facts the expert group cannot ignore”. The first of these three facts is that “abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother. Leading Irish medical experts have already confirmed this fact”. We now know that is wrong, wrong, wrong.Terminations are sometimes required.

Many speakers have referred to how the international media have reported this and how embarrassing it is for Ireland. It is embarrassing but it is, much more, a cause of annoyance. What happened to Savita does not reflect the will of the Irish people, what is in our Constitution or the Supreme Court interpretation of it. There is not a single person in the country, whether pro-choice or pro-life, who believes that what happened in Savita’s last days, if what we hear is true, is acceptable, is in line with our Constitution or should ever happen again.

There is, perhaps inevitably, a desire to lay blame somewhere. We hear the doctors, the hospital and the church all being blamed in the media. The only truly culpable people, however, are ourselves, the present and past members of the Oireachtas, who failed over many years to give legislative expression, or any other kind of expression, to a right guaranteed by our Constitution and voted for in successive referendums by the people of Ireland. If Savita’s husband’s account of what happened is correct, her death is at our door and nobody else’s. I do not want any more deaths at my door.

It is not in anybody’s interest that, due to fear of legal circumstances, we have the appalling prospect of highly qualified and highly trained medical staff finding themselves forced to hover and hesitate around the beds of sick patients, maybe for several agonising days, and to prevaricate, procrastinate and postpone action until there is a virtual certainty that the patient is slipping away and that death is almost inevitable. We cannot leave our doctors in a position where they feel they have no option but to treat living, sentient human beings in a way a vet would not treat a dog.

This is an emotive debate and a complex issue. All sorts of red herrings are being thrown in our path. Some fear this tragic episode will be used to leverage the introduction of abortion on demand. Others would like to see the entire judiciary brought into the labour ward. Some people may well want abortion on demand, although they are few. More, including myself, feel we should look in the future at the situations of rape, incest and extreme youth. None of those issues are on the table today, however. They cannot be, because the Constitution does not allow them to be. The only issue before us is to safeguard the lives of women by giving expression to the Supreme Court judgment in the X case, so that medical people know, when they are treating a woman, that they have a responsibility to act to save the life of the woman before the threat to life is so immediate that death is almost inevitable.

I do not care how that is done. I am delighted to hear the Minister’s personal commitment to ensure it will happen quickly. I do not care if it is done by guidelines, regulation or legislation. I simply want it to happen as quickly as possible. I understand that we have to look at the recommendations of the expert group, but I want the light shone, at last after 20 years, into this grey area where there is no clarity as to the point at which the threat to health becomes a threat to life.