Chairman: I would like to welcome Ms Rosemarie Rowley to this meeting of the Joint Committee on the Constitution. Ms Rowley, you sent us a written submission which I have examined. I think you have an updated submission today.

Ms Rosemarie Rowley: Yes. The first submission I sent was a general look, from a philosophical point of view, at some of the questions surrounding abortion legislation. The document I sent you last evening was written on invitation to speak to the committee. It's quite long. What I am going to do is read a bit from it here and there. I have given you all copies. What it is actually is a particular examination of some questions in relation to ideology, experience and whether this would have a bearing on exclusion and on looking at ..... For example, the debate in Ireland tends to be very polarised, as you are all aware, so I was just looking at it from a different point of view.

Chairman: Yes. You have written quite a lot about this subject down the years, I think.

Ms Rowley: Yes. I have tried to get a hearing because I think it is very important that people realise what's involved and that women especially understand that short-term solutions simply do not work. I am very much for women and for women's health. I always have been a feminist. If you read my submission, you will see that I draw a line between republicanism and feminism as being egalitarian and how in Pearse and all that we look to models from outside who have made a passionate identification with the suffering of the Irish people and came to Ireland. You will trace the same movement in feminism, that certain women who had their formative experience outside the culture came to Ireland with a passionate identification with Irish women who were suffering from passive socialisation. What happened was that they actually put abortion on the agenda as a priority. I am just looking at it in relation to how it has developed as an ideology over the years.

Chairman: I have looked at your submission this morning as well and I see that you are analysing the nature of the ideology that they are promoting-----

Ms Rowley: That's right.

Chairman: -----a pro-abortion approach, a pro-abortion culture in Ireland-----

Ms Rowley: Yes.

Chairman: -----but we are a committee on the Constitution. Is there any practical proposal you wanted to submit to us about that?

Ms Rowley: It's like any question of freedom of information. For example, there has been a lot of talk about how the United Nations wants Ireland to accede to certain questions about freedom of information in relation to abortion. What I would like to know is why in practice ..... the abortion practice has shown that there is a high failure rate in contraceptives, detailed by Colin Francome. There are also a lot of studies done of post-abortion syndrome, which follows after an abortion. I would like that information included if we are going to have ..... in other words, the best decision anyone can make has to include all the information.

From that point of view, I think there has been a certain tendency of the ideology to ignore or suppress the information simply because it doesn't fit in with the picture, the received wisdom. When you have a goal you tend to ignore the evidence as you go along. This is a feature of all ideology, that as you go along, as things appear, you tend to ignore them because in a way they are sort of contradicting your thesis. The thesis in feminism is that abortion is a goal for women and that it helps women. I am saying that if you look at the experience and if you look at the way it has been handled, in fact it's actually anti-woman.

As I said, the ideology can be looked at in a particular way, as the ideology was looked at in Russia. What actually happens is that a predetermined objective determines the way you look at people, including men or including babies, and deprives them of a certain kind of personality; in other words, they lose the quality of personality in the name of justice for women or justice for the wider cause, which originally had very good reasons, but it just went a little bit too far. In depriving the baby of personality and in depriving men of personality, what we are doing actually is legislating for the destruction of life.

That's why I think ideology is very important. I actually wrote about the pain of that kind of reductionism in one of my books called The Sea of Affliction. That's why I am interested in why I was excluded from the general ..... for example, there has been a huge interest in women's writing. I have been writing since the sixties. I have had token inclusion now and then, but I think it's interesting that I was excluded on the grounds, perhaps, that they didn't want to hear what I was saying.

Chairman: Have you looked at the Green Paper?

Ms Rowley: Yes, I have.

Chairman: Have you any comments on it?

Ms Rowley: In relation to rape, there is a definite question of necessity arising out of rape. For example, if you look at the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861, it does actually talk about unlawful, so the law can be actually interpreted in some cases of necessity as a defence and, therefore, lawful, if we look at the case of rape, but the difficulty is that it has been used. Legislation for rape causes a difficulty, there are two difficulties involved, first of all, it opens the door for millions of abortionists. For every one baby you can justify, there are millions of abortions. The second thing I would like to say is that there are two things ... looking at the evidence now about rape ... because the feminist ideology favours abortion, it tends to disregard the evidence of such things as post-abortion distress or trauma. An article in 1995 in The Irish Times written after a paper at an international conference in psychology dismissed the idea of post-abortion trauma as a myth, again evidence of some feminists not wanting to face up to reality. However, we now have an opportunity to look at the evidence. The evidence for post-abortion trauma is mounting. All estimates agree, from the tables of psychology books to the surveys of life organisations, that serious emotional distress is at least 10% and it is believed to be 25%. The standard reply to such figures from pro-abortion ideologists is that 10% had mental illness or mental problems anyway.

I would like to make two observations, 10% is a very significant number in the population; and in the estimate that about 250,000 women may have had abortions since 1970, we are assuming it's double the figure for the people who didn't give addresses. That's 250,000 women. That's 10% of those - 25,000 women may be suffering serious emotional distress and trauma, which is a very significant number.

It takes many forms and it may be a pattern of denial for years only evident in patterns of displacement and being unable to resolve things generally. I will be leaving you a file, which is more detailed, but I would like to say also that emotional distress or trauma or disturbance is not now classified as mental illness. This is actually not classified now, this kind of emotional distress or trauma. It is more in common with psychiatric illness brought about by injury. In fact some studies on post-abortion trauma have found similarities with post-traumatic stress disorder, first noted in veterans of the Vietnam War, now established as a medical condition worthy of compensation.

There are similarities here. If you legislate for the rape victim, what actually happens is ... there are similarities in this case with Vietnam veterans and survival guilt syndrome, post-abortion stress syndrome. If, for example, there was a moral objection to killing, the act of killing then results in such existential grief and angst that it's one of the most painful of conditions. Perhaps the moral objection to killing in a Christian society, such as Ireland, has given rise to a wide incidence of the trauma as well as surrounding silence. Therefore, where there's a moral objection to killing, as in most civilised societies, the justification for killing unborn life has always to arise out of extraordinary circumstances, but when we look at what actually happened, as in the Bourne case in 1936 or in the C case recently in our country, we know that even legislating for the exceptional case of rape has perhaps allowed millions of abortions to be done and the rape victim often suffers existential angst.

It is worthwhile looking at what a very eminent psychologist has said about post-abortion trauma and angst. It's all to do with the duration of time. You see, when we're in the situation of looking at a rape victim or experiencing a trauma or a panic situation as regards rape, and that can include non-consensual sex, non-consensual pregnancy, because in the absence of detailed information about contraception, in that absence of information, there may not be true consent to the pregnancy. It may be in fact classified as non-consent to pregnancy. In other words, we are looking at a very wide definition here, but looking at that ... we look at what Marvin Minsky has to say, which I think is very profound. If you give me the time to say that ... "We all know the seemingly-----

Chairman: Is it in your submission?

Ms Rowley: It's in my submission, but I would like to read it out because I think it's----

Chairman: What page?

Ms Rowley: It's page 30 in last night's submission.

We all know the seemingly inexorable span of mourning, in which it takes so long to accept the loss of things we love. Perhaps this, too, reflects the slowness of attachment change, though it is only one factor. This would also be partially responsible for the prolonged psychological disability that can follow the experience of physical, emotional or sexual assault upon a person. One might ask, since there are so many other devastating aspects of such an experience, why it should involve any connection with attachment memory. I suspect, he says, that any form of intimacy, however unwelcome, has effects upon machinery shared by both attachment and sexuality, and is liable to disturb or disrupt the machinery with which we make relationships in ordinary life. No matter how brief that violent episode, it may lead to derangements in our usual relationships, in part because these agencies are slow to change. It doesn't help very much for the victim to try to view the situation neutrally, because the rest of the mind cannot control these agencies, only time can reconstruct their normal functioning. It is an injury more terrible than loss of sight or limb, to lose the normal use of the agencies with which one builds one's own identity.

Therefore, if we look at ... in cases where people have suffered from violence or sexual violence, the person is unable to assimilate or incorporate aspects of identity or incorporate them into the personality until much later on when the trauma is slowly healing. Therefore my view, as stated in the beginning of this paper, is that while a woman who has been raped and has become pregnant either as a direct result of the rape or because of the dysfunctional relationship arising out of a previous rape or abuse, she will view the pregnancy as a further alienating experience and may feel she does not have the capacity to carry the pregnancy through to term. Public outrage at the time of the X case shows that most people feel sympathetic towards a rape victim and that it would be justified to end the pregnancy. My own feelings is that it is even more complex in that the victim will have to live later on with two further and even more difficult states, the invasiveness of surgery, which is a further violation, and the even harder to heal trauma of having signed for or assented to a killing where her previous pre-rape character found all killing repellent. This, I believe, is the status of a girl in the C case who found abortion further traumatised her and caused further mental distress as well as injury done by rape. We also consider the legislation for rape victims has allowed millions of abortions to be legally carried out. We have mentioned that before.

The use of the pill avoids the ... I think the morning after pill avoids the existential anguish of a certain fact. You see, the grief is the certain fact that you've obliterated certain life, but the morning after pill doesn't actually allow you to know whether or not that has happened. It avoids 100% responsibility for wiping out a certain life. I think that's very important if we look at the results. So I think that's why its very useful and can be looked upon as a necessary remedy and classified under the Act of 1861, whereby the term shall be redefined in law as "medical intervention is lawful at this point" - at that point I would say.

Chairman: Ms Rowley, your submission has been made to the committee and you're elaborating on it?

Ms Rowley: Yes, okay.

Chairman: Isn't that the position?

Ms Rowley: Yes.

Chairman: I'm very glad you did because the core point you addressed was the X case and you drew my attention to the section of the paper dealing with the X case. As you say, one of the great difficulties we have is to see how we can address the X case in this committee.

Ms Rowley: Yes.

Chairman: I take it that your submission is that we should not legislate for the suicide threat extenuating circumstance?

Ms Rowley: I think, I'm in favour of legislation to preserve the life of the mother-----

Chairman: Yes.

Ms Rowley: -----but in real terms if you look at the figures, in fact, there's a much higher rate of suicide for women who have had abortions than the women who have been pregnant. In fact, women who are pregnant hardly ever commit suicide. All the statistics bear this out. So, what we are looking at really in the case of a young girl or woman who has been raped, I think, given her decision causes her to feel 100% responsible. I think also medical intervention early on is advisable, but I honestly think invasive surgery can have dreadful effects as well as the existential burden of guilt.

Chairman: Of course under the present constitutional arrangement, rape of itself would not be a ground, a permissible ground for abortion? There's a connection between the rape and the threat of suicide, which is the circumstances that was posed in the X case.

Ms Rowley: Except in the cases of necessity as a defence against interference with your pregnancy in 1861 law. Like if you say-----

Chairman: The Constitution is superior to the 1861 Act.

Ms Rowley: Yes, on the other hand, there's no legislation, they're just covering the morning after pill at the moment.

Chairman: The Constitution is superior to the 1861 Act.

Ms Rowley: Yes, but the Constitution has decided that the mother's life had a prior claim and in a way I think there's every reason for this since simply because if you look at the history of women, they were almost looked upon as if their lives were expendable in childbirth. Now we have a situation where that's hardly the case anymore. I honestly think if we legislate for rape or for termination of it, we are actually legislating for the destruction of an innocent life.

I think you have to look at what John Finnis says in Natural Law about the consequential ethics that we think we are producing a good result but no one actually knows the outcome of any life. I think all of us have actually been here by extension of the fact that our mothers extended a right to life to us. Who gives anyone the authority to say that they have any justification for extinguishing any life because we simply do not know how it's going to turn out. So as regards the rape victim, there's only two courses, to legislate for the morning after pill and intervention within a time limit and then if there's the question of invasive surgery to actually think about the existential consequences of making somebody 100% responsible for a definite life. That is actually what I would be worried about.

Chairman: Yes, naturally. What do you mean by intervention within certain circumstances?

Ms Rowley: Well, I think the morning after ... there's three days between implantation and conception, you know, for example, if a woman has found herself in a situation where she has been attacked or raped, there's three days before implantation takes place. So I think the GP should always carry, I think every GP should carry the morning after pill and I think there should be legislation to allow that. At the moment, it's not covered. I think it would be covered by the interpretation as a defence at the moment. It exists as a defence in the word "unlawful" in the 1861 Act when, if something, the woman is ... or when whosoever administers-----

Chairman: Yes.

Ms Rowley: -----a substance unlawfully. Therefore, the defence ... a lawful defence would be that it was in the interests of saving the woman's life and that in the interest of her integrity as a person and it would not involve existential anguish afterwards because she wouldn't be certain of whether or not the life was actually ... Now, this may seem - I see you're smiling - this may seem not very... but actually a very important point because, I think, if you look, 20% of natural pregnancies, you know, have a natural abortion as they are known in the medical profession. So, therefore, the interference at this time is a correlation between an act which has abused a naturally good thing and, therefore, the intervention is not in the same category as ... it's actually within the natural occurrence of the uncertainty of ... a general uncertainty surrounding the statistics.

There's a general uncertainty surrounding conception that 20% are actually naturally lost abruptly. People have to grieve about this naturally and they have the occasion to, but the difference between someone actually deciding that and consciously signing for it and bearing that guilt as a definite life is a much more difficult question and has occurred in all examination of people who go through this kind of trauma, that, in fact, if you look at the ... it's the same thing as soldiers going out to war and having a moral objection to killing. You know, if you look at the Vietnam survivors, they come back to their country and it's a well known fact that there's a huge incidence of ... and even in the Gulf War, the same thing arrived.

It is particularly difficult if people are morally conscious of their duty to preserve life and they're put in a situation like that and then if they're actually put in a situation where the instruction is to kill or to cause the death of another being, later on they have to deal with the consequences of going against their own conscience and that's a tremendous pain in the sense that it can never really kind of be restored. That kind of thing can't really restore to a person very easily, whereas, if a person proceeds with a pregnancy, difficult as it may be, the fact is that there is the option of adoption and, you know, if she was given a huge amount of compensation by the State, sort of running into something like £250,000, a really reasonable sum, in other words, if she was protected by the State in these kinds of cases with enormous compensation, then she might be able not have to make that decision to wipe out a definite life and may be glad when she meets her daughter or son later on - they may come back and say "thank you, mother".

I've seen this a lot, you know, looking at the whole literature and I've never known a case actually - and apparently it's, with research, it is backed up. There is no case where a mother, in fact, has distinguished between a wanted or an unwanted child in any degree like a man does. There is no case where it has ever been proved that a woman, once the child is born, actually has any kind of degree of a change of relationship towards a wanted or unwanted child. That's actually proven and I have ... actually research has been done by Cooper... I have actually shown that.

So, in other words, it's terribly traumatic to go through the pregnancy, but I think if the State paid a huge amount of money, really big money - we're not talking about... we're talking about, with due regard to life, which it has, enshrined in the Constitution, that you can't just have empty words. In that kind of case, a huge amount of compensation, a certain amount of privacy, if the girl was willing to talk about and if the statistics were shown for the kind of stress syndrome, she might be enlightened enough to take that path.

On the other hand, by giving her total consent, you're actually creating a 100% burden which will last for life if she has a conscience about killing anything, so ... some people have variations of conscience and conscience can be very elastic, but basically we all know that if you go against your conscience, it causes tremendous difficulty and unhappiness. Sometimes we think pleasure is important but actually doing the right thing is actually what causes happiness.

Chairman: Very good. So the substance really of what you're saying to us this morning, elaborating on your submission, is that there are very strong arguments against allowing a rape exception be used as the basis of an abortion principle. Is that right?

Ms Rowley: Especially when we have a medical method to ... if the GP has it in the surgery, it's not as if we didn't have some sort of way in which we could deal with ... we have three days and that's something which is very interesting. The Vatican doesn't take that view but I take the view that it's there for a purpose. I think those three days, provided we tell young people about it, that they can do this, it would save a huge amount.

Chairman: I think one of the consultants who gave evidence before us made that point, that there's a 72 hour window of opportunity, as he described it.

Ms Rowley: There is really, and we should make that very clear to everybody, every young girl, that if, that she knows immediately to go to the GP and that she knows that. That's why I think you should legislate for it because, to allow it, because it hasn't been legislated for, as far as I know.

Chairman: Are you saying then that, in terms of legislation, if we were to define the unborn, we should exclude the first 72 hours?

Ms Rowley: I think that you have to look at the natural occurrence of miscarriage ... 20% is a huge number of ... that's the natural loss and there's no way we can actually arrive at any factual in natural occurrence of loss over another factor. Apparently, it can be due to a huge amount of different things and it seems nature sometimes decides - when I say nature, what I mean to say is that the general picture is not good for the ... and so ... the reason we don't mourn that as much as abortion is that it's not ... it is the person who actually has no decision about it. They didn't get involved, it wasn't anything to do with them usually so, I think, that's really what we're looking at.

Chairman: So, when I summarised your submission, and I realise you covered quite a range of philosophical and psychological matters, but we're practical legislators, we have to make a decision.

Ms Rowley: Yes.

Chairman: The two main points you're making is, one, that there is that window of opportunity in the first 72 hours and that you'd be very opposed to the principle of introducing abortion on the basis of rape or the threat of suicide.

Ms Rowley: Well, it just hasn't worked in other countries, that's all. If you look at the ... that's really what we ... one of the things we could ... another window of opportunity is that you look at legislation in other countries and it just doesn't work because it always seems to lead to abortion on ... or millions of abortions-----

Chairman: On request.

Ms Rowley: So I honestly think there is a very difficult question about allowing the rape victim a choice and I think that is, would something ... maybe the constitutional interpretation at that point would serve a purpose but as regards drafting the legislation, I think to allow the medical profession some kind of authority here that they wouldn't be prosecuted ... I think very much abortion law in England came about because a lot of people involved in illegal abortions didn't want to be prosecuted for manslaughter. I think that was more of really a reason than the so-called women.

What I'm saying, the back street abortion figures are always used. I feel very regretful about that but I think now that if you look at it, there's no reason that should happen in the sense that people know a lot more than they did and that's historical. It isn't actually applicable to today's situation. It is bad ... it's hard cases make bad law, you know. For example, I think legalising abortion means that people have doubts about the abortion. It's easier for them to obtain an abortion, that's the problem.

If they found themselves in a situation where they hadn't planned for it and not entirely happy for it, what happens then, they say, "Oh well, it's no problem, it's legal, I can go and have it done". So it's like driving up a one way street. You're driving a car and, therefore, you can drive on the left or on the right. Suddenly you see something coming towards you and you avoid it and you take your life ... you risk your life and somebody else's life but if you go to court, you can always defend yourself.

If we legislate for abortion, what we're doing is allowing people to drive on both sides of the road all the time. Having these both kind of laws is like having no law. Maybe it's not an exact example, I hesitate to say that I'm lacking compassion for ... but I honestly think that it's been overused in argument. I think there are millions more women suffering just as equally, if not more, there's far more women suffering from post-abortion trauma than these women and I think that legislation was brought about to protect people from being accused of manslaughter. I think it's a very middle class kind of misplaced compassion, like identifying compassionately with the poor while being in a position of privilege yourself and wishing they had all the bad things you had that are bad for you. If you look at the story of Frank McCourt, people do write about their circumstances and having this point of view, if you keep saying it often enough, they'll never rise above their circumstances, they're just going to be written off. People start believing it then. We all know that if you repeat something often enough ... I'm not lacking in compassion really about these women. I hate to sound like that, but all I'm saying is that it's a case where there are millions and millions of women suffering even more because of legislation of abortion. The silence of these women means that we're not entirely sure how they're suffering. The statistics are rising all the time. Life is giving a figure now of 25%.

Chairman: Go raibh maith agat.

Ms Rowley: Go raibh maith agat. An bhfuil mé déanta anois?

Chairman: Táir críochnaithe anois.

Ms Rowley: Críochnaithe anois. Go raibh maith agat.

Chairman: Tá fáilte romhat.

Sitting suspended at 10.21 a.m. and resumed at 10.25 a.m.

Chairman: We are resuming. I welcome the Association of Irish Humanists, that is to say, Justin Keating, their president, Mary Hardiman, their chairperson, and Dick Spicer, secretary, to this meeting of the Joint Committee on the Constitution. We've received your presentation, your submission, which I have read and it has been circulated to the members. The format of this meeting is that one of you may make a very brief opening statement, if you wish, elaborating the position in your statement. That will be followed by a question and answer session. I want to draw your attention to the fact that while members of the committee have absolute privilege, this same privilege does not apply to you. Would one of you like to make the submission?

Mr. Dick Spicer: Would it be all right if a couple of us did so?

Chairman: Yes, if you would indicate, the chairperson first, yes?

Ms Mary Hardiman: Yes, please. Good morning. I am here with my colleagues representing the Association of Irish Humanists. So that you are clear in your appreciation of humanism, I will begin by briefly stating that humanism is a democratic, non-theistic and ethical life stance which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It rejects supernatural views of reality. It is in this area of rights and responsibilities which we have dealt with in our submission in response to the Green Paper on Abortion that I wish to highlight.

Now keeping the EU Convention on Human Rights to the forefront, I would like to quote from the Green Paper, chapter 5, subsection 5.45, where it states: "It is argued that the common good cannot be promoted through the violation of basic rights, such as the right to life, and that the common good requires the restriction of individual rights in some respects." Now this argument by definition applies only to a small minority in this country, and that's pregnant women with crisis pregnancies. People are not merely a means to an end but are ends in themselves. The woman treated as an incubator of a foetus by law is merely a means to an end and is, therefore, not being regarded as a conscientious person.

While we continue to criminalise abortion, we deny thousands of women their rights, the right to bodily integrity, the right to speak freely, the right to access necessary medical care. Denying a pregnant woman the right to choose is a form of coercion or social control which, as we all know, has been a devastating feature of our past history. Then we incarcerated pregnant women in Magdalene homes. We ostracised them. We exported them to Britain. We drove them to seek illegal abortions and to infanticide. That this regime no longer pertains in this country is because we have a humane, non-absolutist society on our doorstep and we have taken advantage of this to abdicate our responsibility to these women.

Lately we have decriminalised suicide and homosexuality in part because we recognise the irrationality of these laws and because they're inoperable. Now we must have the courage on behalf of our women to decriminalise abortion and to deal with this issue in this jurisdiction. Only when we do this and consequently stop demonising these women will we be enabled to seriously work to reduce the numbers who see abortion as their only option when faced with a crisis pregnancy. I do believe, based on my experience working as a counselling therapist in family planning and as a foster parent, that all agencies working in harmony together towards the same goal can effect change. Thank you.

Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Dick Spicer.

Mr. Spicer: I just want to briefly make a few points and summarise some of the things we have concluded in our various presentations. One, that the current situation is unacceptable and untenable and that a referendum is necessary, perhaps accompanied by draft legislation. The right of an individual woman to choose whether to continue with a crisis pregnancy within the first trimester of pregnancy is one that ought to be recognised constitutionally, legally and medically. That the issue of when human life in a pregnancy begins is central to a resolution of the issues of human rights involved. Following from that, that a real threat to emergency contraception exists in the present situation as submissions coming from the pro-life movement reflect hostility to contraception and abortion from a theological perspective.

Starting with this point, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the role of the pro-life movement in opening up Irish society to the debate of issues which were previously taboo. Its efforts have upset a cosy cloistered culture and forced people to think for themselves and debate a range of issues. People have been driven away from a purely theocratic approach to social issues and the process has encouraged the secularisation of our nation.

In a relatively short period of time, Ireland has moved from a situation where it was the only country in the world to have the entire programme of the moral majority enshrined in law to one in which your committee is addressing this, one of the last remaining issues. The hurt caused to many women by the actions and attitudes of the pro-life movement, however, has been a hard price to pay. I wish to briefly address an issue raised by them.

The submission by Youth Defence stated that Dutch abortion figures are low because they do not include first trimester abortions. This is not the first time this has been placed on public record. We have been in contact with the Dutch ministry responsible and they have assured us that all early interventions after 16 days - their definition of the implantation period - are counted in the abortion statistics. The Dutch figures, then, do indeed show the effectiveness of early and widespread sex education and contraceptive availability as a means of lowering the abortion rate, which is what our earlier submission argued should constitute the way forward.

The willingness of elements in the pro-life movement to try to utilise statistics so as to denigrate such measures shows, we believe, that some are not primarily concerned with the interests of women and the unborn, but are motivated by a theological perspective on human procreation in general, which threatens the provision of emergency contraception. The Catholic Church, other Christian denominations and the pro-life movement define human life as beginning when the fertilisation of ovum by sperm occurs. The Christian church for most of its existence, however, more reasonably saw the quickening as the key moment, i.e. when it received a soul. Muslims currently hold a similar position. This makes a great deal of sense, as the fertilised egg is but a potential human being, up to half being lost through natural causes in the first trimester.

Our perspective is one which accords the developing foetus more rights as life dawns within the womb, rather than one which vests it with full human rights on the meeting of sperm and ovum. We, accordingly, see the end of the first trimester as the earliest at which its interests as a potential human being have to be weighed against those of an adult woman. We have submitted arguments to that effect.

The Green Paper acknowledged the problems possibly facing emergency contraception if "unborn" was taken by the courts as applying at the moment of conception, i.e. if they applied the Christian definition, but stated this has not troubled the courts or the medical profession to date. We would suggest there is absolutely no guarantee that this situation will continue and that it is possibly reckless to assume it will, given the aforementioned attitude of the pro-life lobby and the Catholic church, in particular, to the issue of contraception and abortion.

Emergency contraception, as distinct from the abortion pill, works in two ways. If ovulation has not occurred, it stops it happening and, so, it is simply contraceptive in effect. If, however, ovulation has occurred and sperm meets ovum, it stops implantation, which results in the loss of the fertilised entity. In that case, it can be argued from a theological perspective it constitutes abortion. We, therefore, ask the committee to reconsider the Green Paper's stated approach to the threat posed by the present legal limbo and to consider instead the horrific effect on women, particularly rape victims, of a challenge to emergency contraception on the above grounds.

It is the overriding of women's rights in the entire area of this debate, stemming from a theological perspective to the origins of life, which we feel makes another referendum necessary, from our perspective.

Mr. Justin Keating: Thank you, chairman, for allowing three of us speak. I will be very brief. I wanted to speak to two aspects of the whole problem which come from my own life experience. I was a Member of the Dáil, the Seanad, the European Parliament and, indeed, Government. I would have had occasion in my life to think when is it appropriate to make certain kinds of law or to initiate law which will result in a referendum. When is that appropriate and when is it moral to make certain kinds of law? In the end, this is a moral issue, inescapably. We may be as technical as we like but it is, at base, a moral question.

It seems to be that legislators, from my own experience, must always pay attention to the situation that actually exists - not to an ideal one, but to the one that is there on the ground. The relevant parameters of the present situation are that we are members of the European Union and that our citizens are guaranteed the right to travel and the right to information. It seems that a previous protocol would not be renewed in a new context. That's where we are at. We are promised by President Chirac that during the present French Presidency of the European Union there will be new and more rigorous initiatives in regard to basic human rights. That is where we are at.

We have been quoting the figure of 6,500 abortions of Republic of Ireland people in the UK. I think that isn't a figure that should be accepted. Firstly, it is a little out of date. The rise in the graph is a remarkably straight line and you can extrapolate legitimately to make it 7,000 at present. Secondly, I think it would be imprudent to conclude that that 7,000 includes all the people seeking abortion outside the Republic because many, with the historical connection between Ireland and Britain, will have friends' addresses etc. in the UK. My own instinct is that we are talking about 10,000 people a year - and, if not now, very soon. I say that with no joy, but to indicate the scale of the problem. That looks very, very roughly like about one in 100 women of reproductive age every year - 1% of the women of reproductive age every year go to the UK for abortions.

I will stop the contribution on this subject in a moment. The question is whether a national Parliament, an Oireachtas, is morally entitled to make laws which are irrelevant and which don't seize of the real problem. The real problem is that abortion has always existed and will probably always exist. Nobody likes it, but caring national parliaments make the best they can of a situation that nobody welcomes or is pleased about. To legislate in a way that says, "This is the law, but the 7,000 or 10,000 of you go and solve it somewhere else at somebody else's expense, without the care and cherishing of your own society and culture at a particularly difficult moment of your life" - is it moral to make law like that? That is the question. I will leave it to the committee.

Secondly, because for 40 odd years of my life I have been teaching the veterinary students the mammalian reproduction - I was professor and associate professor, and part of my title was embryology, mammalian embryology, and I am not extending what is appropriate for animals to human beings. I recognise the gulf, but I also recognise it is my professional business to know the explosion of knowledge in reproductive science that has taken place in recent years. This year the human genome, last year cloning, and we are not at the end of a flood of knowledge, we are at the beginning. That seems to me to make a lot of received knowledge, including theology may I say, out of date or inappropriate. And again I will pose not an answer but a question. We are now able to clone mammals. We haven't cloned humans by decision but we have the technology to do so. If we clone a human being - we can and if we did, what would be the moment when the new individual came into existence? I borrow a word from an ideas' system which I don't accept: what would be the moment of ensoulment of the clone which initiated its development as one cell of a pre-existing individual?

I might go on to ask one other brief question. Humans produce billions, literally billions, of spermatozoa - males - and women produce, what, 500 or 1,000 eggs during their reproductive lives. Both are collectable and storable, and carry the code of life in them, analysed, and are utterly expendable. From the moment one meets the other and they fuse, the rights of the zygote, as it is called technically, are claimed to be equal to the rights of a mature adult woman. That seems to me not to be reasonable or rational. So, that, we should be very careful making legislation which will be almost immediately shown to be out of date, shown to be out of date because we know the delays of national parliaments, shown to be out of date before it becomes law. It is very dangerous now because of the reproduction science revolution.

Finally, I would say this on one issue: question - should we have a referendum? I remember and participated in a previous referendum. It was divisive and unpleasant. And I would beg people, and I might beg the committee if they feel moved to do so, to put it into a report, to say, "Please, can the media and other responsible people, insist on decent standards of truth - and, indeed, can I say, within society - affection and respect and love on the part of the contending parties, that we conduct that debate honourably?"

But society is divided. We can't escape that. We may say that a referendum would be divisive but the division is there. And those who have caused previous referenda to be held have done Ireland a service because they made the unmentionable mentionable, they brought it out. We were enabled in a quasi----- We only half way got to a decent debate the last time, but we might try to get to a decent honourable debate this time. And the exposing of profound social divisions, and the discussion of them in a rational and cherishing way, accepting the good faith of all parties, is a healing process and not a divisive one. We mustn't conclude that a referendum would be necessarily the tearing apart of society or a damaging thing; because the more there is knowledge, the more there is rational debate, the more there is acceptance of the honour and morality, according to their rights, of the different participants, the more we can listen to each other and trust each other and draw together as a society.

Chairman: Thank you very much for a very stimulating contribution. But, Mr. Keating, the vast majority of the submissions we have received have sought a referendum based on a particular form of wording, which would in some sense contain an absolute prohibition on the carrying out of an abortion within the jurisdiction, and would address the question of the effect of the Supreme Court decision in the X case. Of course, we have conducted these hearings and in the first instance we heard evidence from various medical practitioners and it would appear as a result of the evidence they have given, that there is now no clear wording available to meet that particular objective, and you seem to be proposing a different wording this morning, I take it, if you are championing the cause of a referendum. So, I was wondering what is that wording?

Mr. Spicer: We don't have a wording, but we-----

Chairman: You want a relaxation of the present constitutional position.

Mr. Spicer: We do indeed. We feel that the current situation is the best that could possibly, or the worst from our perspective, be achieved from those of a different persuasion. We feel that under the present circumstances, any legislation that was enacted would be so restrictive as to really be pointless in terms of helping or assisting women who were in a crisis pregnancy, and remain possibly suicidal. By the time they had been through the whole process they'd be dead.

Another point, about the discussion that took place on suicide and pregnancy, I felt that an awful lot of the statistics that were produced were irrelevant because the effects of a crisis pregnancy on a woman's state of mind would be completely different in a jurisdiction where there was access to early abortion, and in a jurisdiction where there was no abortion. In other words, that very pre-existing situation would have a bearing on a woman's state of mind if she was facing a crisis pregnancy. So, I feel any comparison between our jurisdiction and the effects of a crisis pregnancy on a young woman, or any particular woman, would be completely different.

Chairman: You are essentially arguing for option seven in the Green Paper, isn't that right - that we would relax the present law, and a necessary preliminary to that would be a referendum-----

Mr. Spicer: Yes.

Chairman: -----in which the Oireachtas would be empowered or authorised to provide for that?

Mr. Spicer: I can see a virtue in having draft legislation accompanying a referendum so that people would be absolutely clear what they were voting for. And there might indeed be some virtue in a preferendum, but I haven't gone into the exact details of that. But yes, we feel that from our perspective an abortion referendum is required if we are to have progress and if women's rights are to be respected.

Chairman: And do you think that is in the realm of a serious practical political possibility as this point in time?

Mr. Spicer: Well, you are the politicians. You are the politicians and you are asking to hear from us, you know. I mean, we are giving you our feelings on the matter-----

Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Spicer: -----and our analysis. If you want to, you can be all practical politicians. That is your role, but this is our role.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Ms Hardiman: I would like to say something here from my experience as a counsellor. Justin states 7,000. Each year the figures are going up. Each year you are having more people pro-abortion because it is their experience and it is their families' experience. I don't think that there will be such a black and white situation now among people because it is, as I say, a growing experience within our community. Not only do you have the woman who's choosing to have an abortion for her own reasons, but you have, in a lot of instances, her family supporting her. So, you have these growing numbers. So, saying that the submissions you are getting on the pro-abortion side are the greater number, I think that is because these people are very vocal but there are-----

Chairman: I think you meant to say the anti-abortion side.

Ms Hardiman: The anti-abortion side, thank you, yes. On the other side, there is a growing number of people whose experience is that they have been down that route themselves and they ... and their families have been with them. I think the experience might be different in the next referendum.

Chairman: Can I make one point on that in relation to a referendum. This is a sensitive subject, it is a subject that arouses not just acute theological opinion, but philosophical disagreement as well. If a referendum is held - as you rightly say, there are a great number of women in Ireland who have been through the experience of having an abortion - does a referendum, of itself, not cause further trauma to these women?

Ms Hardiman: Yes. Every time it appears in the media, it causes trauma for these women, yes, and they cannot be here to speak for themselves. Even those women who are anti-abortion before they become ... face a crisis pregnancy, they cannot speak for themselves either, even among their own friends now, and I have in my experience met these women, and the answer is "yes", it does cause trauma but these women would rather that we face the issue and accept them.

Mr. Keating: Chairman, I wonder would it be possible for me to go back very briefly about the question of wording, because this is obviously very difficult when much wiser heads than ours didn't get it right on a previous occasion. There is clearly difficult law and there are difficulties of choosing an appropriate consensus within our society. But let me start from each end. As far as we would be concerned from the humanist viewpoint, a total prohibition is not a serious alternative for the reasons that I indicated - that is it doesn't address the problem and that it exports it. That is not a responsible thing to do, or even a moral thing to do. On the other hand, abortion on demand of a frivolous, almost frivolous kind - it's not a frivolous action - but that is clearly almost as undesirable.

In an ideal world, no child would be born unwished for, no child unwanted born, but it's not an ideal world and, therefore, I think we would favour a form of words, a consensus, which made abortion possible, legal within the country but difficult and only at the end of a much improved system of prior counselling and only if the decision to go to term and bear the child were taken, that the child would be born into a context of a much more developed system of supports than currently exists - that one can make the argument much more strongly - bear the child - if the social atmosphere and if the structure of social services is such that it is not so terrifying and so unthinkable for a young woman often alone and in very difficult surroundings. So, I think difficult but possible in the context of greatly improved support systems is a shot at some kind of guidance of a form of words.

Mr. Spicer: I would add to that that we do feel there ought to be a differentiation made between the very early stages and subsequent time. In other words, that the real problem ... one of the real problems in this area is as has been mentioned - crediting this fertilised ovum with equal rights to an adult woman. We do not feel that that is reasonable, moral or ethical.

Chairman: Setting aside the rest of your submission for a moment, because I noticed you addressed this specific issue in considerable detail, it has been a thread running through the evidence and it has found support in different quarters - some surprising quarters - the point of view you've just expressed.

Mr. Spicer: I'm very pleased to hear that. I haven't had a chance to read everything that's been put forward but I did notice some references to it. But, essentially, from the humanist perspective, we do feel that the theological view point, that this fertilised ovum should be given equal weight, is just not in any way sustainable and that this might be a possible option that would be put to people.

You know, there ought to be some way of putting this as an option in a referendum - that the full equal rights or that the term "unborn" applies at a certain stage. Now there are different suggestions as to when it might apply - ours is at the end of the first trimester, others might say at the end of implantation, others might say, as I noticed in some of the submissions, when there is a heart beat. But this is an area, surely, which should be open to national debate.

Chairman: Well, I think from----- Well, we've had a debate on it but I think ... I interpreted your submission as meaning that while your strict position was three months, you'd be very anxious to see that 72 hours was cleared up as a-----

Mr. Spicer: Well, indeed, absolutely. We do feel that is a definite danger under the present circumstance. I didn't want to dwell on it for fear you felt I was labouring that particular point again.

Chairman: No.

Mr. Spicer: But we do feel that is a danger and given the theology of those who are opposed to abortion and given the theological ramifications of the fertilised ovum and the effects of emergency contraception, we do feel that that does introduce a note of urgency into the situation. I mean the international ramifications, quite apart from what would happen to women in this country, it would be just awful to behold this country dragged through the international mire again over something like this.

Chairman: But accepting that we recognise the value of all human life and accepting - even if you want to disagree with me in a moment, for a moment on this - accepting the proposition that a lot of people believe that unborn life must be valued as well to a very early stage, there must still be some discretion for the Legislature in any constitutional arrangement to deal with difficult, borderline cases. Would you accept that, Mr. Keating? You can't have a referendum on all these subjects. The Legislature has to have some power to deal with them.

Mr. Keating: I think that, yes ... my feeling is to say "yes" to that. But I would add that it's very dangerous in a referendum, in a constitution, in law to try to bind the future because the situation is changing, both in society in Ireland and in the basic science, extremely rapidly and whatever one does, one has to do it in the knowledge that the consensus, the paradigm of society in 20 or 30 years, may be quite different and, in fact, I think in the context we're in now - there are periods when change on earth is quite slow - but it's extremely rapid at the moment. So that I think the----- An effort should not be made to bind the future, if I put it that way.

Senator O'Donovan: Just briefly going back to the point your chairperson made there regarding the decriminalisation of abortion. Could you just, maybe, elaborate on that because what I would see as decriminalisation of abortion would basically indicate that abortion on demand would be available. I make the point in view of----- We, some years ago - not too long ago - decriminalised the crime of felo de se , or suicide, and since then, unfortunately, rates are alarmingly increasing. Do you wish to qualify that point? Because, if I was to take verbatim what you said in that point is that you would absolutely change the 1861 Act to make abortion legal at any stage, even in the second semester, thus creating a very open regime.

Ms Hardiman: I would not say the suicide statistics have increased alarmingly. Yes, they have increased, but remember, they were not documented when it was a criminal act, necessarily, so we did not really have true figures. There are statistics to show that the abortion rates in England and Wales pre the 1967 Act were not very dissimilar to those after the Act was brought in, so there was not an opening of the floodgates, just as in our divorce referendum there was not an opening of the floodgates. I personally do not think that there will be an alarming increase.

We then put in place legislation and education. I personally would not have a fear that the rates will rise alarmingly, but we do need legislation. I would like to remove abortion from the Constitution entirely.

Senator O'Donovan: You say that abortion should not be a criminal act at any stage. Suppose somebody with full mens rea and malice aforethought decides on an abortion five months into pregnancy, whether it be in Ireland, England or Holland. Would you not see the need for some kind of law?

Ms Hardiman: Regulation.

Senator O'Donovan: It could cover a 72 hour or 14 week period. If abortion is decriminalised by repeal of the 1861 Act would you not have a problem if somebody who is five or six months pregnant decides to have an abortion for any reason?

Ms Hardiman: There needs to be regulation, yes, just as there is in Britain and in Holland. They have decriminalised it, so I do not see why we cannot do the same thing.

Chairman: Some of the medical representatives told us it would cause an earthquake in this country to introduce abortion facilities here.

Ms Hardiman: The medical profession is very authoritarian in this country. I think we have to challenge it. There is not a consensus among the medical profession. That would be my experience from working in family planning.

Senator O'Donovan: I am not a medical person and I would not have Mr. Keating's experience in drafting legislation, but the impression I got from the vast majority of medical people we heard, including the Medical Council, was that there was a very conservative approach to the whole issue by the Medical Council and some senior gynaecologists and obstetricians. Some went so far as to say that if abortion was introduced in a restrictive fashion - say by use of the 14 or 16 week period as a cut-off point - they would opt out for religious reasons and would not perform abortions. I will not name names. Does this not mean that a seismic shift would be required? We have been told at these hearings that the Medical Council holds certain views and if there was a change to even half way towards what you purport to be reasonable, many of the medical people would opt out of such medical treatment or operations of any nature. That is my impression.

Mr. Spicer: That could well be so. That is their right. We are not trying to impose anything on anyone. We would take exactly the opposite perspective. I mean, we are trying to cater for diversity and cater for individuals' choice. It would be completely inconsistent for us to be appalled at that prospect. But I am quite sure, as Mary said, that the description of it as a potential earthquake is probably exaggerated and we have seen and are seeing in Ireland at the moment, as in other parts of the world, the collapse of these hierarchical institutions of authority. Many of them have been seen as having feet of clay. I would possibly raise the question as to how really how representative is the Medical Council.

Mr. Keating: Chairman, might I add to that though legislation is obviously a national issue, medical science is not a national issue. The Irish doctors, as I read most of the consensus opinion coming from them, would be very much out of line with their colleagues in other countries and would be out of line with the people who are at the cutting edge of evolving reproductive science. It is not that we are in the position of being the peculiar people vis-à-vis what is general public opinion, it is that Irish doctors, in their overall consensus, are very much out of line with their colleagues in most developed countries.

Chairman: But Mr. Keating, despite 33 years operation of the 1967 Act in the United Kingdom, there are a growing number of doctors in England and Scotland who will not operate the provisions of the Act. The numbers of doctors who will not operate the Act is actually increasing.

Mr. Keating: Yes, but we are not talking about something on such a vast scale as an influenza epidemic, that you need the whole medical resources of the country. We are talking about something first, that though it is on a very serious scale, it is not enormous and secondly, we hope that with ongoing knowledge by the young about reproduction, it will diminish and, therefore, it is perfectly feasible to have sufficient doctors to operate a limited scheme in Ireland and to simultaneously recognise the conscientious, and totally to be respected, objection of other doctors. It is not, I would have thought just looking at the numbers, an administrative problem. It is not a moral problem because one must totally respect the moral objections that certain doctors may have. But, my own experience would indicate that there would be quite enough doctors in Ireland who thought that it was moral and proper in certain circumstances to carry out abortions, so that on the ground, in the operation of our health services, it would not be difficult. I say that without expertise. That could turn out, if you looked at the numbers, to be quite wrong.

Chairman: I would like to thank the witnesses for their attendance today and I will suspend the session for a few minutes.

Mr. Keating: I want to reciprocate your thanks because we feel it especially important, as we feel rather as outsiders to the consensus, to the paradigm of the country and it is a mark of the maturity of democracy that everybody is listened to and we would look on ourselves to some extent as an example of that and we are, therefore, particularly grateful for your gracious listening to our submission.

Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Keating.

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