Over 6,000 Irish women have abortions in England every year. Four referendums over 17 years have not changed that, yet a minority of the all-party committee has called for yet another.

The committee reached a welcome consensus on a plan to reduce the extent of crisis pregnancies, and welcome consensus was also reached on the impossibility of inserting an "absolute ban" into the Constitution, after overwhelming medical evidence showed that abortions are performed in Ireland to save the lives of women.

But no consensus was reached on further legal reform. Fine Gael members opted to leave the legal position unchanged; the Labour Party favoured legislation to implement the Supreme Court's decision in the X case; and Fianna Fail opted for another referendum.

The options for reform present an either/or choice. We can have legislation allowing abortion where pregnancy poses a risk to life, legislation promised in 1992, for which a need has clearly been demonstrated in the X and C cases; or we can have a bitter, divisive and unnecessary debate about a referendum already defeated in 1992.

Our choice should be clear. The referendum option is utterly cynical. The Government appears willing to sacrifice the lives of Irish women in order to placate four Independent TDs, in a pathetic attempt to hold on to power for a few extra months.

Apart from the political cynicism of the referendum option, it lacks any logical basis, depending on a spurious distinction between "physical" and "mental" risk to life. In its submission to the committee, the State-funded Women's Health Council called such a distinction "invidious, given the close interplay between physical and mental health". To differentiate between the two also trivialises the very real risk of self-destruction, particularly where pregnancy is the result of rape.

Recent research shows that suicide risk in pregnant women reduces by a third as compared to non-pregnant women, but is far from non-existent. Indeed, the Master of the Rotunda gave evidence that a woman came to his hospital in 1999, having attempted suicide late in her pregnancy. Moreover, research does not show how many women later commit suicide, having been forced to carry a pregnancy to term.

The reality is that women do take and historically have always taken risks with their lives where abortion is denied to them: we have rarely had to confront this in Ireland, because safe, legal abortion is available in England.

ANTI-ABORTION activists absolutely refuse to accept this reality. They say pregnant women don't commit suicide, so why lobby for a referendum to rule out a non-existent risk? They believe women are devious, and they see abortion on grounds of suicide as a "slippery slope" to abortion on wider grounds.

This view is not only ridiculous in the context of present Irish law, and deeply offensive to women, but it also amounts to an attack on the integrity of mental health professionals, who would have to assess suicide risk in any X-case legislation. Our law routinely allows such professionals to detain people against their will on the prediction of suicide risk.

Well-developed guidelines for suicide assessment are thus established in mental healthcare. Does the anti-abortion lobby believe these are invalid; that psychiatrists, too, are devious?

The farcical arguments of its proponents demonstrate the futility of the referendum proposal. Of the two options for legal change, the Labour Party approach is clearly the more rational, offering an immediate practical resolution.

Legislation to protect women who face risk of death arising from pregnancy would safeguard current medical practice, prevent the occurrence of future X and C cases, and not require a referendum. Most importantly, it would protect the lives of suicidal pregnant women who are unable to travel, for health, legal or other reasons.

However, neither option addresses the needs of the majority of Irish women who have abortions each year on grounds other than risk to life. Their needs cannot fully be met without a constitutional referendum to remove the eighth amendment and replace it with legislation providing for free, safe and legal abortion in this country.

Irrespective of what limited legal change arises out of this report, ultimately the law must give women the right to choose abortion in Ireland.

Ivana Bacik is Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College Dublin and a member of the Dublin Abortion Rights Group