A complete ban on abortion should be added to the Constitution, an Oireachtas committee's abortion hearings were told yesterday.
Dr Gerard Casey said any direct attack on human life was "subversive of the entire moral and legal order".
Dr Casey was answering questions before the committee on behalf of the Public Policy Institute of Ireland along with Mr Tom Troy.
In its written submission to the committee, the group called for a return to the status quo before the X case, which would guarantee the right to life of the unborn, subject to the equal right to life of the mother.
Mr Troy said Ireland was the best environment in the world to have children, with a maternal mortality rate which was the lowest in the world.
There was a strong identification between the people and the State which they would not want to lose.
Dr Casey, who is also a member of Christian Solidarity, said he voted against the wording of the 1992 abortion amendment as it had allowed for the direct and intentional taking of human life in circumstances, however restrictive.
Dr Casey said that in every other modern jurisdiction the introduction of abortion, initially in restrictive circumstances, had "invariably led to the granting of access to abortion for reasons that have nothing to do with the life of the mother and very often what can be regarded simply as a matter of convenience".
Ms Liz McManus TD (Labour) questioned Dr Casey about the rare occasions when, to save a woman's life, the treatment was an abortion. She gave an example of women with severe cardiac conditions.
Dr Casey said an action which resulted in the death of a child was not "in and of itself an abortion. We mean an action which intentionally and directly takes the life of the child in the womb."