Medical procedures available in public hospitals to protect the life of an expectant mother might not be available in a private hospital if part of the Fianna Fail approach is introduced.
The report stated that under this approach legislation would be enacted to protect existing medical practice.
It stated that the legislation should provide that it would be a defence in any prosecution that the doctor had reasonable grounds to believe that the actions taken were "essential medical treatment to protect the life of the mother". "The territorial scope of this defence could be limited to public hospitals," it continued.
The chairman of the All-party Committee on the Constitution, Mr Brian Lenihan, said yesterday that this might never happen. However, committee members felt they wanted this differentiation included. He said the word "should" had been used in other instances but because of disagreement among members "could" was used here.
Mr Lenihan said there were divergent views on the substantive questions on abortion but it had been possible to get quite a lot of consensus.
"What was agreed between the parties was to establish the crisis pregnancy agency, and various other distinct programmes."
He added that if the number of abortions was to be reduced, a culture of abstinence needed to be promoted as well as restraint in relation to sexuality.
"Dail Eireann does not have a very good record through the years in its discussions of sexuality," he said.
The Fine Gael committee representative, Mr Jim O'Keeffe, said it was up to the Government now to produce a proposal on abortion. He said that since 1967, when the Abortion Act was introduced in the UK, more than 100,000 Irish women would have had abortions. Those women, he said, would have ". . . had no medical check-ups, no counselling".
"Fine Gael's position is very much influenced by this approach," he said.