Bill facing 'suicide or abortion' options

Members of a Dβil select committee were asked yesterday whether, if they had a daughter who was pregnant as a result of rape or incest and suicidal, they would prefer she committed suicide than have an abortion.

The Labour spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, said the Government would have to "make that choice" if it "persisted in pursuing" its Bill on abortion as it is currently worded.

She was speaking on the final day of the Dβil select committee on abortion which has been discussing the proposed Bill on the Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy.

The main issue discussed yesterday was the section stipulating that a pregnancy may be terminated only "to prevent a real and substantial risk of loss of the woman's life other than by self destruction".

The Bill passed the committee stage yesterday with 17 amendments and is expected at report stage, before the Dβil, early next week.

Ms McManus said that while suicide was rare in pregnancy "it is real". She said the majority of women who travelled to England for an abortion "never came near an obstetrician" and so it was impossible to know all the reasons why Irish women had abortions.

"We have to ask ourselves, if it were my daughter, do we want to put in place a legislation where we say to her: 'You may not have a termination. I would rather you kill yourself'. Unless we can abide by laws ourselves we cannot make them for others."

She also asked what would happen if a case arose where a girl in the care of a health board were suicidal. Could the health board arrange for her to travel for an abortion, she asked.

Citing the 1997 C case, she said the basis of the ruling which allowed a 13-year-old girl in the care of the Eastern Health Board to travel for an abortion, was the precedent of the 1992 X case.

"It was not in the C case, that the girl had a right to travel but that she had a right to abortion because there was a threat to her life." In both cases the girls were suicidal. Ms McManus said that if the right to abortion on the grounds of suicide was not available in Ireland such girls would "lose the right to have an abortion in England".

Mr Alan Dukes (FG) said the Bill was an attempt "roll back the judgment in the 1992 X case".

He also asked why the Bill excluded psychiatric reasons as grounds for an abortion.

It was "doing a disservice to the medical profession and an even greater disservice to the women we are talking about".

The Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, said he wanted to make it "very, very clear" that his Department did not regard psychiatrists as untrustworthy.

Calling suicide multi-factorial he said there were many reasons why a person took their own life.

He said a health board could arrange for a suicidal girl in its care to travel for an abortion.

Mr Alan Shatter, however, said removing the suicide ground would mean a health board would be criminalised if it arranged an abortion for a person in its care who was suicidal.

"I believe it's inevitable that, at some point in the future, a young girl will be dragged through the High Court and the Supreme Court while this whole mess is sorted out."