As the debate on the abortion referendum gathers pace, the twobiggest political parties are taking opposing sides. Here they outline their arguments. A Yes vote will guarantee the safety of pregnant women while protecting the unborn, writes Brian Cowen
Someone once said that there is an answer to every problem. An answer that is simple, straightforward - and wrong.
In the past, we have come up with that kind of answer to the problem of crisis pregnancies. This time, we have taken a different course, embarking on a painstaking and unprecedented consultative process.
In 1997, after this Government took office, the Taoiseach indicated he intended to publish a Green Paper on abortion. A Cabinet committee was established to supervise the drafting. As Minister for Health, I was the Minister responsible for the process.
Submissions were invited from the public, from professional and voluntary organisations and any others who wished to contribute. Over 10,000 such submissions were received, as well as petitions containing 36,500 signatures.
The Green Paper was published in September 1999 and was then referred to the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution. That committee, chaired by Brian Lenihan TD, then had a detailed consultation process inviting written submissions and holding oral hearings. Groups which made submissions and gave oral testimony included medics, lawyers, representatives of all the main churches, pro-life and pro-choice organisations, women's groups and other individuals.
The final report of the All-Party Committee was referred to the Cabinet Committee in November 2000.
I detail the consultative process because the process is arguably as important as what emerged at the end of it.
The process demonstrated that in spite of the radically opposed and passionately held views expressed, there was a growing maturity in the debate, best exemplified by the unemotive, non-judgmental tone of most of the contributions. The exhaustive approach taken also illustrated that the simple absolutes and assumptions of the past could not properly be in play in the framing of the future.
Specifically and demonstrably out-dated was the belief that a magic phrase could be incorporated into the Constitution to cover all eventualities. It's now inescapably clear that legislation facilitates a level of clarity which would not be possible with the kind of amendment to the Constitution which has been used in the past. The innovative approach taken in this referendum allows the people to know exactly the detail of legislation which will be passed if they vote Yes.
It allows the people to be certain that only the passage of legislation in the form that they have seen will give permanent effect to the constitutional amendment. This approach also ensures the law cannot be amended without the approval of the people in a subsequent referendum.
While no single legislative move could ever satisfy all mutually opposed views on this issue, what distinguishes the proposal placed before the people in this referendum - apart from the breadth of the consultative process backing it - is the clarity of its congruence with medical opinion.
It removes the legal uncertainty surrounding the issue of treatment which might entail the loss of unborn life. This proposal ensures that any medical treatment necessary to save the life of the mother is possible. The medical evidence received from experts in this area runs counter to the assumptions current a couple of decades ago, which held that there was no medical problem which could require the termination of a pregnancy in order to save the life of the mother. We now know that's not the case. We also know that medical treatments of that nature are carried out only after careful diagnosis, monitoring and management - and that there are no circumstances where a decision would have to be made within a very short period of time to intervene to save a woman's life.
A Yes vote in the referendum, then, ensures absolute protection for the clinical autonomy of every doctor treating a pregnant woman in this country and absolute safety for the patient, while simultaneously affording protection for the unborn.
If legal uncertainties for doctors are removed by a Yes vote, so, too, are legal uncertainties in regard to the morning-after pill. The All-Party Committee attached importance to the availability of emergency or post- coital contraception as a key method of reducing the number of crisis pregnancies. While licensing of a medicinal product is the business of the Irish Medicines Board, which last year licensed the morning-after pill on the grounds that it is not an abortifacient, a Yes vote will guarantee the continued availability of such emergency contraception.
THE "trust women" posters placed by the Labour Party seem to imply that women are not to be trusted when they express suicidal feelings.
This implication is deliberately mischievous. First of all, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has made it plain that there are (in their words) "no absolute psychiatric indications for termination of pregnancy". In other words, no mental illness or condition exists for which abortion is the treatment.
Furthermore, suicide is rarer among pregnant women than among the rest of the population. To legislate for suicidal feelings would therefore be a false and fruitless move with predictable consequences which would not reflect the desire of the majority of those who made submissions to the All-Party Committee.
In their very detailed statement of last Thursday, Professors Anthony Clare and Patricia Casey put the case very forcefully. This is an honest proposal, clear in its intent and impact, which deals effectively with the issues left unaddressed for the last decade.
Brian Cowen is Minister for Foreign Affairs