Madam, – As a parent, I have come to realise that children owe their parents nothing. Children do not decide to be born, parents decide to have children. Once that decision has been made, and fertilisation occurs, a new human life exists. An embryo is a person, life begins at conception. Whether this conception occurs in utero or in vitro, it doesn’t matter, the fact remains that a fertilised egg is the result.
The issue of whether to implant an embryo comes down to one very simple fact. It is not a question of the mother’s right, it is not a question of the father’s right; it is about the person’s right to life. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – In 1999, I brought a Private Members Bill before the Seanad, the Regulation of Assisted Human Reproduction Bill, 1999. It was supported by all the Independent Senators at the time.
About one in six couples experience infertility and treatment was already well established in Ireland. I brought the Bill forward because the lack of regulation allowed clinics or persons to make unsubstantiated claims for their success rates, and charges for treatments were frequently very high. Medical Council rules were useful but not all those working in the clinics were doctors. Indeed, anyone without any specific qualifications could set up a clinic to deal with a very vulnerable group of people. The above situations still persist.
The then minister for health and children, Micheál Martin, did not give the Bill a second reading, but promised to progress towards legislation on the issue rapidly. He did set up a commission which reported in 2005. I was on a small sub-committee of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, which examined this report at the time and approved it. Almost five years later there has been no further progress.
We are relying at present on the self-regulation of practitioners in the field by membership of the Irish Fertility Society. But not all practitioners are members.
Even with legislation there will be court cases, but the continuing delay is inexcusable as some of the Supreme Court judges said. Legislators in Ireland seem to think we have greater problems than legislators elsewhere with such issues, but this is not so. It is just that we are better at putting off difficult decisions and adding to the distress of people like the couple in the present Supreme Court case. Because of the lack of clarity about the status of the “unborn”, Mary Roche felt she had to go to the courts. Other such cases will follow.
“Long overdue” might look like a bad pun regarding this legislation, but already our legislators are out of time. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – It is beyond belief that the courts can get into a quandary over embryos while a toddler gets molested and murdered in the North. People would be best served by the law if it ensured a good standard of living for people who actually live. I am reminded of the words of the Very Revd Victor Griffin in 1983 when he described the then abortion referendum as “. . . one more example of our sex-obsessed society. The idea of sin seems confined to the sexual sphere. The moral writ of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ runs only in the domain of sexual morality.” – Yours, etc,