The abortion referendum is being falsely presented as a protection for women's health, a family doctor has claimed.
Dr Tara Conlon, a member of Doctors for Choice, said if the referendum was passed, a serious risk of suicide would not be deemed a sufficient risk to a woman's life to allow her have a termination of her pregnancy.
"A woman's mental health will be deemed to be of less value than her physical health. As doctors we do not accept that anyone's health can be split in this way," she said "This amendment is presented to us as a protection for women's health. It is not a protection for women's health."
Dr Conlon was speaking at a rally in Dublin on Saturday organised by the Alliance for a No Vote. "As a doctor I can tell you that rape and child abuse are not rare occurrences and if this amendment is passed there will be more cases like those of X and C. They deserve our care and not our rejection," she said.
Ms Ivana Bacik, who is Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College Dublin, said the referendum was "a dangerous, misguided and a deeply deeply hypocritical proposal" which most people would not get to see before they were required to vote on it.
"The Constitution is no place to deal with crisis pregnancy and the Constitution is no place to put a criminal sanction of 12 years on a woman who chooses to have an abortion in this country.
"We must defeat this referendum. It can be defeated. We do not want to be the kind of society that denies suicidal young women the option of abortion. We do not want to go backwards in time to be the kind of society that threatens students with jail for giving information on abortion and we do not want to be the kind of society that interns young rape victims in this country and forces them to continue with a pregnancy when they are suicidal. We must not turn back the clock," she added.
Labour's Ms Eithne Fitzgerald said it was "absolutely offensive and disgraceful" that people were being asked to roll back the "humane" Supreme Court decision made in the X case. "We have eminent psychiatrists who say that it is very rare that a women who is pregnant is suicidal. It may be rare but it has happened twice in the last 10 years in Irish society and who is to say it will never happen again and are we to say we are turning our back on any other woman who faces that kind of situation?"
Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole suggested that the holding of the referendum by the Government was "an act of pure cynical hypocrisy" aimed at keeping certain people off their backs during the next election.
He claimed the proposed legislation was "an outrageously badly drafted piece of legislation" whose meaning was absolutely unclear and which was "putting down minefields for Irish women over the next 10 or 20 years if it was passed".
He said the Government had "the gall" to put up posters saying they were protecting women and children when they pursued Ms Kathryn Sinnott to the Supreme Court.
Mr Joe Higgins TD said a situation could arise where a woman who was raped could see her attacker get a suspended sentence and she for getting rid of the result of that attack, could face 12 years in prison. "Ms Mary Lou McDonnell of Sinn Féin said the amendment was "not only inadequate" but "also potentially very dangerous".