Taoiseach again rules out right to life referendum

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has again ruled out holding a referendum to reverse the eight amendment to the Constitution on the right to life of the unborn and mother.

He was replying in the Dáil to Socialist Party TD Ruth Coppinger who referred to the court hearing at Christmas on turning off the life support machine for a clinically dead pregnant woman.

Mr Kenny said two referendums were planned for next May, on marriage equality and the age eligibility to run for the presidency,

He added he had already said there would not be a referendum on the eight amendment in the current Government’s lifetime.

“This is a matter on which you can blithely say should be considered by way of referendum in the month of May,’’ he added.

“I don’t think, Deputy Coppinger, that you realise the scale of the challenge that would be involved here.’’

He said it was all too easy for Ms Coppinger to call for the removal of the eight amendment. “I would like to hear you tell me what you propose to replace it with,’’ he added.

Mr Kenny said the family involved had requested privacy and did not want the matter discussed in the Dáil. “I respect their request for privacy,’’ he added.

Earlier, Ms Coppinger said it was the first chance the Dail had to discuss “the horrific case of a clinically dead pregnant woman kept alive for 23 days in December against her family’s wishes’’.

She expressed sympathy with the family who had to endure “the tragic loss of their young daughter and then watch the indignities that were heaped upon her’’.

The family, she added, had been forced into the courts to be allowed bury their daughter over Christmas. This was all due to the fears doctors had about the eighth amendment, she said.

“It is the State that is preventing people making personal decisions about highly sensitive matters, not the other way around,’’ said Ms Coppinger.

She said Dr Peter Boylan, former master of the National Maternity Hospital, had said "what was done to this tragic woman was grotesque and experimental''.

Ms Coppinger said no 15-week foetus had ever survived to delivery anywhere on the planet, but doctors had told the family that an attempt to save the foetus was being made for constitutional reasons.

“This woman had a ventilator inserted, a tracheotomy tube on her neck, six syringe pumps for drugs to stop infection and make-up applied when her children came to visit to make her look something like she had been,’’ she added.

Ms Coppinger said Mr Kenny had marched in Paris against religious fundamentalism . “Are you willing to allow the Irish people the chance to remove a law which is the envy of religious fundamentalists around the world ?,’’ she asked.