The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, has denied allegations that he is misleading the public about the consequence of a No vote in the forthcoming referendum on abortion.
The Irish Family Planning Association's chief executive, Mr Tony O'Brien, said earlier that Mr Ahern's claim that a rejection of the referendum would give Ireland a liberal abortion regime was not true, because this would require a radical change to the Constitution.
Mr Ahern said last night that in countries where abortion was allowed when suicide was threatened, there was an "enormous" increase in the number of abortions. "The facts are that you get an enormous increase in the number of abortions leading to liberal abortion," he said.
Mr O'Brien said the Taoiseach, after calling for calm and honest debate, was now trying to scare people into voting Yes. "Much the same was said by Albert Reynolds in 1992." It was misleading, since a liberal regime would require a radical change in the Constitution
If Mr Ahern was being honest, he said, he would tell people that this referendum was about stepping back to the 1980s and ignoring the plight faced by the young girls in the X case and the C case, both of whom were pregnant and suicidal.
Launching the association's campaign for a No vote, he said that what had been compromised with these proposals were the right to life of Irish women and the principles and credibility of the Progressive Democrats.
The detailed and complex nature of what people were being asked to vote on meant the electorate would be back in polling booths in less than five years if this referendum was passed. "This is a ticking bomb," said Mr O'Brien.
Ms Catherine Forde, an IFPA board member and barrister, said she was not reassured by the commitment given by the Minister for Health last week that suicidal victims of rape and incest could have their abortions abroad paid for by their health board.
If a minor who had been raped was in care, if she was pregnant and suicidal and wanted an abortion, the main barrier was not money but the fact that permission was required from the courts to enable the girl to travel.
She explained that the Supreme Court judgment in the X case enabled the 13-year-old girl at the centre of the C case in 1997 to travel for an abortion.
"Should a future similar case arise, the girl or woman would not be permitted to travel and would be denied an abortion here. In this context, these proposals create the conditions in which there may be a future suicide by reasons of the enforced continuation of pregnancy."
The Government, Mr O'Brien said, wanted to turn the clock back 10 years. "They want to go back to the way it was when the High Court denied Miss X the very right [to an abortion\] to a time when the State was more concerned with protecting the progeny of a rapist than with the well-being of his suicidal rape victim.
"And to add insult to injury, they want to have a new third millennium law that would see any future Miss X who might procure an abortion here to be subject to up to 12 years in prison. How much would the rapist have got?"